Artem Drabkin

The sun armor is hot,

And the dust of the hike on my clothes.

Pull the overalls off the shoulder -

And into the shade, into the grass, but only

Check the engine and open the hatch:

Let the car cool down.

We will endure everything with you -

We are people, but she is steel...

"This must never happen again!" - the slogan proclaimed after the Victory became the basis for the entire domestic and foreign policy of the Soviet Union in the post-war period. Having emerged victorious from the most difficult war, the country suffered enormous human and material losses. The victory cost more than 27 million Soviet lives, which amounted to almost 15% of the population of the Soviet Union before the war. Millions of our compatriots died on the battlefields, in German concentration camps, died of hunger and cold in besieged Leningrad, and in evacuation. The “scorched earth” tactics carried out by both warring sides during the retreat left the territory, which before the war was home to 40 million people and which produced up to 50% of the gross national product, lay in ruins. Millions of people found themselves without a roof over their heads and lived in primitive conditions. The fear of a repetition of such a catastrophe dominated the nation. At the level of the country's leaders, this resulted in colossal military expenditures, which placed an unbearable burden on the economy. At our philistine level, this fear was expressed in the creation of a certain supply of “strategic” products - salt, matches, sugar, canned food. I remember very well how as a child my grandmother, who experienced wartime hunger, always tried to feed me something and was very upset if I refused. We, children born thirty years after the war, continued to be divided into “us” and “Germans” in our yard games, and the first German phrases we learned were “Hende Hoch”, “Nicht Schiessen”, “Hitler Kaput” " In almost every house one could find a reminder of the past war. I still have my father’s awards and a German box of gas mask filters, standing in the hallway of my apartment, which is convenient to sit on while tying your shoelaces.

The trauma caused by the war had another consequence. An attempt to quickly forget the horrors of war, to heal wounds, as well as a desire to hide the miscalculations of the country’s leadership and the army resulted in the propaganda of an impersonal image of “the Soviet soldier who bore on his shoulders the entire burden of the fight against German fascism” and praise of the “heroism of the Soviet people.” The policy pursued was aimed at writing an unambiguously interpreted version of events. As a consequence of this policy, the memoirs of combatants published during the Soviet period bore visible traces of external and internal censorship. And only towards the end of the 80s it became possible to talk openly about the war.

The main objective of this book is to introduce the reader to the individual experiences of veteran tankers who fought on the T-34. The book is based on literary interviews with tank crews collected between 2001 and 2004. The term “literary processing” should be understood exclusively as bringing recorded oral speech into conformity with the norms of the Russian language and building a logical chain of storytelling. I tried to preserve as much as possible the language of the story and the peculiarities of speech of each veteran.

I note that interviews as a source of information suffer from a number of shortcomings that must be taken into account when opening this book. Firstly, one should not look for exceptional accuracy in descriptions of events in memories. After all, more than sixty years have passed since they took place. Many of them merged together, some were simply erased from memory. Secondly, you need to take into account the subjectivity of the perception of each of the storytellers and not be afraid of contradictions between the stories of different people or the mosaic structure that develops on their basis. I think that the sincerity and honesty of the stories included in the book are more important for understanding the people who went through the hell of war than punctuality in the number of vehicles that participated in the operation or the exact date of the event.

An attempt to generalize the individual experience of each person, to try to separate the common features characteristic of the entire military generation from the individual perception of events by each of the veterans, is presented in the articles “T-34: Tank and Tankers” and “The Crew of a Combat Vehicle.” Without in any way pretending to complete the picture, they nevertheless allow us to trace the attitude of the tank crews to the equipment entrusted to them, the relationships in the crew, and life at the front. I hope that the book will serve as a good illustration of the fundamental scientific works of Doctor of History. n. E. S. Senyavskaya “Psychology of war in the 20th century: the historical experience of Russia” and “1941 - 1945. Front-line generation. Historical and psychological research."

Alexey Isaev

T-34: TANK AND TANK PEOPLE

German vehicles were crap against the T-34.

Captain A. V. Maryevsky

“I did it. I held out. Destroyed five buried tanks. They couldn’t do anything because these were T-III, T-IV tanks, and I was on the “thirty-four”, whose frontal armor their shells did not penetrate.”

Few tankers from the countries participating in World War II could repeat these words of the commander of the T-34 tank, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar, in relation to their combat vehicles. The Soviet T-34 tank became a legend primarily because those people who sat behind the levers and sights of its cannon and machine guns believed in it. In the memoirs of tank crews, one can trace the idea expressed by the famous Russian military theorist A. A. Svechin: “If the importance of material resources in war is very relative, then faith in them is of enormous importance.”

Svechin served as an infantry officer in the Great War of 1914 - 1918, saw the debut of heavy artillery, airplanes and armored vehicles on the battlefield, and he knew what he was talking about. If soldiers and officers have faith in the technology entrusted to them, then they will act bolder and more decisively, paving their way to victory. On the contrary, distrust, readiness to mentally or actually throw a weak weapon will lead to defeat. Of course, we are not talking about blind faith based on propaganda or speculation. Confidence was instilled in people by the design features that strikingly distinguished the T-34 from a number of combat vehicles of that time: the inclined arrangement of armor plates and the V-2 diesel engine.

Artem Drabkin

The sun armor is hot,

And the dust of the hike on my clothes.

Pull the overalls off the shoulder -

And into the shade, into the grass, but only

Check the engine and open the hatch:

Let the car cool down.

We will endure everything with you -

We are people, but she is steel...

S. Orlov

"This must never happen again!" - the slogan proclaimed after the Victory became the basis for the entire domestic and foreign policy of the Soviet Union in the post-war period. Having emerged victorious from the most difficult war, the country suffered enormous human and material losses. The victory cost more than 27 million Soviet lives, which amounted to almost 15% of the population of the Soviet Union before the war. Millions of our compatriots died on the battlefields, in German concentration camps, died of hunger and cold in besieged Leningrad, and in evacuation. The “scorched earth” tactics carried out by both warring sides during the retreat left the territory, which before the war was home to 40 million people and which produced up to 50% of the gross national product, lay in ruins. Millions of people found themselves without a roof over their heads and lived in primitive conditions. The fear of a repetition of such a catastrophe dominated the nation. At the level of the country's leaders, this resulted in colossal military expenditures, which placed an unbearable burden on the economy. At our philistine level, this fear was expressed in the creation of a certain supply of “strategic” products - salt, matches, sugar, canned food. I remember very well how as a child my grandmother, who experienced wartime hunger, always tried to feed me something and was very upset if I refused. We, children born thirty years after the war, continued to be divided into “us” and “Germans” in our yard games, and the first German phrases we learned were “Hende Hoch”, “Nicht Schiessen”, “Hitler Kaput” " In almost every house one could find a reminder of the past war. I still have my father’s awards and a German box of gas mask filters, standing in the hallway of my apartment, which is convenient to sit on while tying your shoelaces.

The trauma caused by the war had another consequence. An attempt to quickly forget the horrors of war, to heal wounds, as well as a desire to hide the miscalculations of the country’s leadership and the army resulted in the propaganda of an impersonal image of “the Soviet soldier who bore on his shoulders the entire burden of the fight against German fascism” and praise of the “heroism of the Soviet people.” The policy pursued was aimed at writing an unambiguously interpreted version of events. As a consequence of this policy, the memoirs of combatants published during the Soviet period bore visible traces of external and internal censorship. And only towards the end of the 80s it became possible to talk openly about the war.

The main objective of this book is to introduce the reader to the individual experiences of veteran tank crews who fought on the T-34. The book is based on literary interviews with tank crews collected between 2001 and 2004. The term “literary processing” should be understood exclusively as bringing recorded oral speech into conformity with the norms of the Russian language and building a logical chain of storytelling. I tried to preserve as much as possible the language of the story and the peculiarities of speech of each veteran.

I note that interviews as a source of information suffer from a number of shortcomings that must be taken into account when opening this book. Firstly, one should not look for exceptional accuracy in descriptions of events in memories. After all, more than sixty years have passed since they took place. Many of them merged together, some were simply erased from memory. Secondly, you need to take into account the subjectivity of the perception of each of the storytellers and not be afraid of contradictions between the stories of different people or the mosaic structure that develops on their basis. I think that the sincerity and honesty of the stories included in the book are more important for understanding the people who went through the hell of war than punctuality in the number of vehicles that participated in the operation or the exact date of the event.

An attempt to generalize the individual experience of each person, to try to separate the common features characteristic of the entire military generation from the individual perception of events by each of the veterans, is presented in the articles “T-34: Tank and Tankers” and “The Crew of a Combat Vehicle.” Without in any way pretending to complete the picture, they nevertheless allow us to trace the attitude of the tank crews to the equipment entrusted to them, the relationships in the crew, and life at the front. I hope that the book will serve as a good illustration of the fundamental scientific works of Doctor of History. n. E. S. Senyavskaya “Psychology of war in the 20th century: the historical experience of Russia” and “1941 - 1945. Front-line generation. Historical and psychological research."

Alexey Isaev

T-34: TANK AND TANK PEOPLE

German vehicles were crap against the T-34.

Captain A. V. Maryevsky

“I did it. I held out. Destroyed five buried tanks. They couldn’t do anything because these were T-III, T-IV tanks, and I was on the “thirty-four”, whose frontal armor their shells did not penetrate.”

Few tankers from the countries participating in World War II could repeat these words of the commander of the T-34 tank, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar, in relation to their combat vehicles. The Soviet T-34 tank became a legend primarily because those people who sat behind the levers and sights of its cannon and machine guns believed in it. In the memoirs of tank crews, one can trace the idea expressed by the famous Russian military theorist A. A. Svechin: “If the importance of material resources in war is very relative, then faith in them is of enormous importance.”

Artem Drabkin

The sun armor is hot,

And the dust of the hike on my clothes.

Pull the overalls off the shoulder -

And into the shade, into the grass, but only

Check the engine and open the hatch:

Let the car cool down.

We will endure everything with you -

We are people, but she is steel...

S. Orlov

"This must never happen again!" - the slogan proclaimed after the Victory became the basis for the entire domestic and foreign policy of the Soviet Union in the post-war period. Having emerged victorious from the most difficult war, the country suffered enormous human and material losses. The victory cost more than 27 million Soviet lives, which amounted to almost 15% of the population of the Soviet Union before the war. Millions of our compatriots died on the battlefields, in German concentration camps, died of hunger and cold in besieged Leningrad, and in evacuation. The “scorched earth” tactics carried out by both warring sides during the retreat left the territory, which before the war was home to 40 million people and which produced up to 50% of the gross national product, lay in ruins. Millions of people found themselves without a roof over their heads and lived in primitive conditions. The fear of a repetition of such a catastrophe dominated the nation. At the level of the country's leaders, this resulted in colossal military expenditures, which placed an unbearable burden on the economy. At our philistine level, this fear was expressed in the creation of a certain supply of “strategic” products - salt, matches, sugar, canned food. I remember very well how as a child my grandmother, who experienced wartime hunger, always tried to feed me something and was very upset if I refused. We, children born thirty years after the war, continued to be divided into “us” and “Germans” in our yard games, and the first German phrases we learned were “Hende Hoch”, “Nicht Schiessen”, “Hitler Kaput” " In almost every house one could find a reminder of the past war. I still have my father’s awards and a German box of gas mask filters, standing in the hallway of my apartment, which is convenient to sit on while tying your shoelaces.

The trauma caused by the war had another consequence. An attempt to quickly forget the horrors of war, to heal wounds, as well as a desire to hide the miscalculations of the country’s leadership and the army resulted in the propaganda of an impersonal image of “the Soviet soldier who bore on his shoulders the entire burden of the fight against German fascism” and praise of the “heroism of the Soviet people.” The policy pursued was aimed at writing an unambiguously interpreted version of events. As a consequence of this policy, the memoirs of combatants published during the Soviet period bore visible traces of external and internal censorship. And only towards the end of the 80s it became possible to talk openly about the war.

The main objective of this book is to introduce the reader to the individual experiences of veteran tankers who fought on the T-34. The book is based on literary interviews with tank crews collected between 2001 and 2004. The term “literary processing” should be understood exclusively as bringing recorded oral speech into conformity with the norms of the Russian language and building a logical chain of storytelling. I tried to preserve as much as possible the language of the story and the peculiarities of speech of each veteran.

I note that interviews as a source of information suffer from a number of shortcomings that must be taken into account when opening this book. Firstly, one should not look for exceptional accuracy in descriptions of events in memories. After all, more than sixty years have passed since they took place. Many of them merged together, some were simply erased from memory. Secondly, you need to take into account the subjectivity of the perception of each of the storytellers and not be afraid of contradictions between the stories of different people or the mosaic structure that develops on their basis. I think that the sincerity and honesty of the stories included in the book are more important for understanding the people who went through the hell of war than punctuality in the number of vehicles that participated in the operation or the exact date of the event.

An attempt to generalize the individual experience of each person, to try to separate the common features characteristic of the entire military generation from the individual perception of events by each of the veterans, is presented in the articles “T-34: Tank and Tankers” and “The Crew of a Combat Vehicle.” Without in any way pretending to complete the picture, they nevertheless allow us to trace the attitude of the tank crews to the equipment entrusted to them, the relationships in the crew, and life at the front. I hope that the book will serve as a good illustration of the fundamental scientific works of Doctor of History. n. E. S. Senyavskaya “Psychology of war in the 20th century: the historical experience of Russia” and “1941 - 1945. Front-line generation. Historical and psychological research."

Alexey Isaev

T-34: TANK AND TANK PEOPLE

German vehicles were crap against the T-34.

Captain A. V. Maryevsky

“I did it. I held out. Destroyed five buried tanks. They couldn’t do anything because these were T-III, T-IV tanks, and I was on the “thirty-four”, whose frontal armor their shells did not penetrate.”

Few tankers from the countries participating in World War II could repeat these words of the commander of the T-34 tank, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar, in relation to their combat vehicles. The Soviet T-34 tank became a legend primarily because those people who sat behind the levers and sights of its cannon and machine guns believed in it. In the memoirs of tank crews, one can trace the idea expressed by the famous Russian military theorist A. A. Svechin: “If the importance of material resources in war is very relative, then faith in them is of enormous importance.”

Svechin served as an infantry officer in the Great War of 1914 - 1918, saw the debut of heavy artillery, airplanes and armored vehicles on the battlefield, and he knew what he was talking about. If soldiers and officers have faith in the technology entrusted to them, then they will act bolder and more decisively, paving their way to victory. On the contrary, distrust, readiness to mentally or actually throw a weak weapon will lead to defeat. Of course, we are not talking about blind faith based on propaganda or speculation. Confidence was instilled in people by the design features that strikingly distinguished the T-34 from a number of combat vehicles of that time: the inclined arrangement of armor plates and the V-2 diesel engine.

The principle of increasing the effectiveness of tank protection due to the inclined arrangement of armor plates was clear to anyone who studied geometry at school. “The T-34 had thinner armor than the Panthers and Tigers. Total thickness approximately 45 mm. But since it was located at an angle, the leg was approximately 90 mm, which made it difficult to penetrate,” recalls the tank commander, Lieutenant Alexander Sergeevich Burtsev. The use of geometric structures in the protection system instead of brute force by simply increasing the thickness of armor plates gave, in the eyes of the T-34 crews, an undeniable advantage to their tank over the enemy. “The placement of the Germans’ armor plates was worse, mostly vertical. This is, of course, a big minus. Our tanks had them at an angle,” recalls the battalion commander, Captain Vasily Pavlovich Bryukhov.

Of course, all these theses had not only theoretical, but also practical justification. In most cases, German anti-tank and tank guns with a caliber of up to 50 mm did not penetrate the upper frontal part of the T-34 tank. Moreover, even the sub-caliber shells of the 50-mm anti-tank gun PAK-38 and the 50-mm gun of the T-III tank with a barrel length of 60 calibers, which, according to trigonometric calculations, should have pierced the forehead of the T-34, in reality ricocheted off the highly hard sloping armor without causing any harm to the tank. A statistical study of combat damage to T-34 tanks undergoing repairs at repair bases No. 1 and 2 in Moscow, carried out in September-October 1942 by NII-48, showed that out of 109 hits to the upper frontal part of the tank, 89% were safe, with dangerous injuries accounted for guns with a caliber of 75 mm and higher. Of course, with the advent of a large number of 75-mm anti-tank and tank guns by the Germans, the situation became more complicated. 75-mm shells were normalized (turned at right angles to the armor when hit), penetrating the inclined armor of the forehead of the T-34 hull already at a distance of 1200 m. 88-mm anti-aircraft gun shells and cumulative ammunition were equally insensitive to the slope of the armor. However, the share of 50-mm guns in the Wehrmacht until the Battle of Kursk was significant, and faith in the sloping armor of the “thirty-four” was largely justified.

Any noticeable advantages over the T-34 armor were noted by tankers only in the armor protection of British tanks, “... if a blank pierced the turret, then the commander of the English tank and the gunner could remain alive, since practically no fragments were formed, but in the “thirty-four” the armor crumbled, and those in the tower had little chance of survival,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov.

This was due to the exceptionally high nickel content in the armor of the British Matilda and Valentine tanks. If Soviet 45-mm high-hardness armor contained 1.0 - 1.5% nickel, then the medium-hard armor of British tanks contained 3.0 - 3.5% nickel, which ensured a slightly higher viscosity of the latter. At the same time, no modifications to the protection of the T-34 tanks were made by the crews in the units. Only before the Berlin operation, according to Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Petrovich Schwebig, who was the deputy brigade commander of the 12th Guards Tank Corps for technical matters, screens made of metal bed nets were welded onto tanks to protect against Faust cartridges. Known cases of shielding of “thirty-fours” are the fruit of the creativity of repair shops and manufacturing plants. The same can be said about painting tanks. The tanks arrived from the factory painted green inside and out. When preparing the tank for winter, the task of the deputy commanders of tank units for technical matters included painting the tanks with whitewash. The exception was the winter of 1944/45, when the war raged across Europe. None of the veterans remembers camouflage being applied to the tanks.

An even more obvious and confidence-inspiring design feature of the T-34 was the diesel engine. Most of those who were trained as a driver, radio operator, or even commander of a T-34 tank in civilian life in one way or another encountered fuel, at least gasoline. They knew well from personal experience that gasoline is volatile, flammable and burns with a bright flame. Quite obvious experiments with gasoline were used by the engineers whose hands created the T-34. “At the height of the dispute, designer Nikolai Kucherenko in the factory yard used not the most scientific, but a clear example of the advantages of the new fuel. He took a lit torch and brought it to a bucket of gasoline - the bucket was instantly engulfed in flames. Then the same torch was lowered into a bucket of diesel fuel - the flame went out, as if in water...” This experiment was projected onto the effect of a projectile hitting a tank, capable of igniting the fuel or even its vapors inside the vehicle. Accordingly, T-34 crew members treated enemy tanks to some extent with contempt. “They had a gasoline engine. This is also a big drawback,” recalls gunner-radio operator senior sergeant Pyotr Ilyich Kirichenko. The same attitude was towards tanks supplied under Lend-Lease (“Very many died because a bullet hit them, and there was a gasoline engine and nonsense armor,” recalls the tank commander, junior lieutenant Yuri Maksovich Polyanovsky), and Soviet tanks and a self-propelled gun equipped with a carburetor engine (“Once SU-76s came to our battalion. They had gasoline engines - a real lighter... They all burned out in the very first battles...” recalls V.P. Bryukhov). The presence of a diesel engine in the engine compartment of the tank gave the crews confidence that they had much less chance of suffering a terrible death from fire than the enemy, whose tanks were filled with hundreds of liters of volatile and flammable gasoline. The proximity to large volumes of fuel (the tankers had to estimate the number of buckets of it each time they refueled the tank) was masked by the thought that it would be more difficult for anti-tank gun shells to set it on fire, and in the event of a fire, the tankers would have enough time to jump out of the tank.

However, in this case, the direct projection of experiments with a bucket onto tanks was not entirely justified. Moreover, statistically, tanks with diesel engines had no advantages in fire safety compared to vehicles with carburetor engines. According to statistics from October 1942, diesel T-34s burned even slightly more often than T-70 tanks fueled with aviation gasoline (23% versus 19%). Engineers at the NIIBT test site in Kubinka in 1943 came to a conclusion that was directly opposite to the everyday assessment of the ignition potential of various types of fuel. “The Germans’ use of a carburetor engine rather than a diesel engine on the new tank, released in 1942, can be explained by: […] the very significant percentage of fires in tanks with diesel engines in combat conditions and their lack of significant advantages over carburetor engines in this regard, especially with the proper design of the latter and the availability of reliable automatic fire extinguishers.” By bringing a torch to a bucket of gasoline, designer Kucherenko ignited vapors of volatile fuel. There were no vapors above the layer of diesel fuel in the bucket favorable for igniting with a torch. But this fact did not mean that diesel fuel would not ignite from a much more powerful means of ignition - a projectile hit. Therefore, placing fuel tanks in the fighting compartment of the T-34 tank did not at all increase the fire safety of the T-34 in comparison with its peers, whose tanks were located in the rear of the hull and were hit much less frequently. V.P. Bryukhov confirms what was said: “When does the tank catch fire? When a projectile hits a fuel tank. And it burns when there is a lot of fuel. And at the end of the fighting there is no fuel, and the tank hardly burns.”

Tankers considered the only advantage of German tank engines over the T-34 engine to be less noise. “The gasoline engine, on the one hand, is flammable, and on the other hand, it is quiet. T-34, it not only roars, but also clacks its tracks,” recalls the tank commander, junior lieutenant Arsenty Konstantinovich Rodkin.

The power plant of the T-34 tank initially did not provide for the installation of mufflers on the exhaust pipes. They were placed at the rear of the tank without any sound-absorbing devices, rumbling with the exhaust of a 12-cylinder engine. In addition to the noise, the tank's powerful engine kicked up dust with its muffler-less exhaust. “The T-34 raises terrible dust because the exhaust pipes are directed downward,” recalls A.K. Rodkin.

The designers of the T-34 tank gave their brainchild two features that distinguished it from the combat vehicles of allies and enemies. These features of the tank increased the crew's confidence in their weapon. People went into battle with pride in the equipment entrusted to them. This was much more important than the actual effect of the slope of the armor or the real fire hazard of a tank with a diesel engine.

Tanks appeared as a means of protecting the crews of machine guns and guns from enemy fire. The balance between tank protection and anti-tank artillery capabilities is quite precarious, artillery is constantly being improved, and the newest tank cannot feel safe on the battlefield. Powerful anti-aircraft and hull guns make this balance even more precarious. Therefore, sooner or later a situation arises when a shell that hits the tank penetrates the armor and turns the steel box into hell.

Good tanks solved this problem even after death, receiving one or more hits, opening the way to salvation for people within themselves. The driver's hatch in the upper frontal part of the T-34 hull, unusual for tanks from other countries, turned out to be quite convenient in practice for leaving the vehicle in critical situations. Driver mechanic Sergeant Semyon Lvovich Aria recalls:

“The hatch was smooth, with rounded edges, and getting in and out of it was not difficult. Moreover, when you got up from the driver’s seat, you were already leaning out almost up to your waist.” Another advantage of the driver’s hatch of the T-34 tank was the ability to fix it in several intermediate relatively “open” and “closed” positions. The hatch mechanism was quite simple. To facilitate opening, the heavy cast hatch (60 mm thick) was supported by a spring, the rod of which was a gear rack. By moving the stopper from tooth to tooth of the rack, it was possible to firmly fix the hatch without fear of it falling off on potholes in the road or battlefield. Driver mechanics readily used this mechanism and preferred to keep the hatch ajar. “When possible, it’s always better with an open hatch,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. His words are confirmed by the company commander, senior lieutenant Arkady Vasilyevich Maryevsky: “The mechanic’s hatch is always open to the palm of his hand, firstly, everything is visible, and secondly, the air flow with the top hatch open ventilates the fighting compartment.” This ensured a good overview and the ability to quickly leave the vehicle if a projectile hit it. In general, the mechanic was, according to the tankers, in the most advantageous position. “The mechanic had the greatest chance of surviving. He sat low, there was sloping armor in front of him,” recalls the platoon commander, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar; according to P.I. Kirichenko: “The lower part of the hull, as a rule, is hidden behind the folds of the terrain, it is difficult to get into. And this one rises above the ground. Mostly they fell into it. And more people died who were sitting in the tower than those below.” It should be noted here that we are talking about hits that are dangerous for the tank. Statistically, in the initial period of the war, most of the hits fell on the tank hull. According to the NII-48 report mentioned above, the hull accounted for 81% of hits, and the turret - 19%. However, more than half of the total number of hits were safe (not through): 89% of hits in the upper frontal part, 66% of hits in the lower frontal part and about 40% of hits in the side did not lead to through holes. Moreover, of the hits on board, 42% of the total number occurred in the engine and transmission compartments, the damage to which was safe for the crew. The tower, on the contrary, was relatively easy to break through. The less durable cast armor of the turret offered little resistance even to 37-mm automatic anti-aircraft gun shells. The situation was worsened by the fact that the T-34's turret was hit by heavy guns with a high line of fire, such as 88-mm anti-aircraft guns, as well as hits from long-barreled 75-mm and 50-mm guns of German tanks. The terrain screen that the tanker was talking about was about one meter in the European theater of operations. Half of this meter is ground clearance, the rest covers about a third of the height of the T-34 tank’s hull. Most of the upper frontal part of the hull is no longer covered by the terrain screen.

If the driver's hatch is unanimously assessed by veterans as convenient, then tankers are equally unanimous in their negative assessment of the turret hatch of early T-34 tanks with an oval turret, nicknamed the “pie” for its characteristic shape. V.P. Bryukhov says about him: “The big hatch is bad. It is heavy and hard to open. If it jams, then that’s it, no one will jump out.” He is echoed by the tank commander, Lieutenant Nikolai Evdokimovich Glukhov: “The large hatch is very inconvenient. Very heavy". The combination of hatches into one for two crew members sitting next to each other, a gunner and a loader, was uncharacteristic of the world tank building industry. Its appearance on the T-34 was caused not by tactical, but by technological considerations related to the installation of a powerful weapon in the tank. The turret of the predecessor of the T-34 on the assembly line of the Kharkov plant - the BT-7 tank - was equipped with two hatches, one for each of the crew members located in the turret. For its characteristic appearance with the hatches open, the BT-7 was nicknamed “Mickey Mouse” by the Germans. The Thirty-Fours inherited a lot from the BT, but the tank received a 76-mm gun instead of a 45-mm cannon, and the design of the tanks in the fighting compartment of the hull changed. The need to dismantle the tanks and massive cradle of the 76-mm gun during repairs forced the designers to combine two turret hatches into one. The body of the T-34 gun with recoil devices was removed through a bolted cover in the rear niche of the turret, and the cradle with a serrated vertical aiming sector was removed through the turret hatch. Through the same hatch, fuel tanks mounted in the fenders of the T-34 tank hull were also removed. All these difficulties were caused by the side walls of the turret sloping towards the gun mantlet. The T-34 gun cradle was wider and higher than the embrasure in the front part of the turret and could only be removed backwards. The Germans removed the guns of their tanks along with its mask (almost equal in width to the width of the turret) forward. It must be said here that the designers of the T-34 paid a lot of attention to the possibility of repairing the tank by the crew. Even... ports for firing personal weapons on the sides and rear of the turret were adapted for this task. The port plugs were removed and a small assembly crane was installed into the holes in the 45 mm armor to remove the engine or transmission. The Germans had devices on the tower for mounting such a “pocket” crane - a “piltse” - only appeared in the final period of the war.

One should not think that when installing a large hatch, the designers of the T-34 did not take into account the needs of the crew at all. In the USSR before the war, it was believed that a large hatch would facilitate the evacuation of wounded crew members from the tank. However, combat experience and tankers’ complaints about the heavy turret hatch forced A. A. Morozov’s team to switch to two turret hatches during the next modernization of the tank. The hexagonal tower, nicknamed the “nut,” again received “Mickey Mouse ears” - two round hatches. Such turrets were installed on T-34 tanks produced in the Urals (ChTZ in Chelyabinsk, UZTM in Sverdlovsk and UVZ in Nizhny Tagil) since the fall of 1942. The Krasnoye Sormovo plant in Gorky continued to produce tanks with the “pie” until the spring of 1943. The problem of removing tanks on tanks with a “nut” was solved using a removable armor jumper between the commander’s and gunner’s hatches. The gun began to be removed according to the method proposed to simplify the production of a cast turret back in 1942 at plant No. 112 "Krasnoe Sormovo" - the rear part of the turret was lifted with hoists from the shoulder strap, and the gun was pushed into the gap formed between the hull and the turret.

The tankers, in order to avoid the situation of “searching for the latch with bare hands,” preferred not to lock the hatch, securing it... with a trouser belt. A.V. Bodnar recalls: “When I went on the attack, the hatch was closed, but not latched. I hooked one end of the trouser belt to the hatch latch, and wrapped the other a couple of times around the hook that held the ammunition on the turret, so that if something happened, you hit your head, the belt would come off and you would jump out.” The same techniques were used by commanders of T-34 tanks with a commander's cupola. “On the commander’s cupola there was a double-leaf hatch, locked with two latches on springs. Even a healthy person had difficulty opening them, but a wounded person certainly could not. We removed these springs, leaving the latches. In general, we tried to keep the hatch open - it would be easier to jump out,” recalls A. S. Burtsev. Note that not a single design bureau, either before or after the war, used the achievements of soldiers’ ingenuity in one form or another. Tanks were still equipped with latched hatches in the turret and hull, which the crews preferred to keep open in battle.

The daily service of the "thirty-four" crew was replete with situations when the same load fell on the crew members and each of them performed simple but monotonous operations, not much different from the actions of a neighbor, such as opening a trench or refueling a tank with fuel and shells. However, the battle and march were immediately distinguished from those forming in front of the tank with the command “To the car!” people in overalls of two crew members who had primary responsibility for the tank. The first was the commander of the vehicle, who, in addition to controlling the battle on the early T-34s, acted as a gunner: “If you are the commander of the T-34-76 tank, then you shoot yourself, you command by radio, you do everything yourself” (V.P. Bryukhov).

The second person in the crew, who bore the lion's share of responsibility for the tank, and therefore for the lives of his comrades in battle, was the driver. The commanders of tanks and tank units rated the driver in battle very highly. “... An experienced driver is half the success,” recalls N. E. Glukhov.

This rule knew no exceptions. “The driver-mechanic Grigory Ivanovich Kryukov was 10 years older than me. Before the war he worked as a driver and had already fought at Leningrad. Was injured. He felt the tank perfectly. I believe that it was only thanks to him that we survived the first battles,” recalls tank commander Lieutenant Georgy Nikolaevich Krivov.

The special position of the driver in the “thirty-four” was due to relatively complex control, requiring experience and physical strength. To the greatest extent, this applied to the T-34 tanks of the first half of the war, which had a four-speed gearbox, which required the gears to move relative to each other with the engagement of the required pair of gears on the drive and driven shafts. Changing gears in such a box was very difficult and required great physical strength. A. V. Maryevsky recalls: “You couldn’t turn on the gear shift lever with one hand, you had to help yourself with your knee.” To make gear shifting easier, boxes were developed with gears that were constantly in mesh. Changing the gear ratio was no longer carried out by moving gears, but by moving small cam clutches sitting on the shafts. They moved along the shaft on splines and engaged with it the required pair of gears that were already in mesh from the moment the gearbox was assembled. For example, the pre-war Soviet motorcycles L-300 and AM-600 had a gearbox of this type, as well as the M-72 motorcycle produced since 1941, a licensed copy of the German BMW R71. The next step towards improving the transmission was the introduction of synchronizers into the gearbox. These are devices that equalize the speeds of cam clutches and gears with which they engage when a particular gear is engaged. Shortly before downshifting or upshifting, the clutch engaged with the gear by friction. So it gradually began to rotate at the same speed as the selected gear, and when the gear was engaged, the clutch between them was carried out silently and without shock. An example of a gearbox with synchronizers is the Maybach type gearbox of the German T-III and T-IV tanks. Even more advanced were the so-called planetary gearboxes of Czech-made tanks and Matilda tanks. It is not surprising that the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal S.K. Timoshenko, on November 6, 1940, based on the results of tests of the first T-34, sent a letter to the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars, which, in particular, said: “In the first half of 1941, factories should develop and prepare planetary transmission for T-34 and KV for serial production. This will increase the average speed of the tanks and make it easier to control.” They didn’t have time to do any of this before the war, and in the first years of the war the T-34s fought with the least advanced gearbox that existed at that time. “Thirty-fours” with a four-speed gearbox required very well-trained driver mechanics. “If the driver is not trained, then instead of the first gear he can put in the fourth, because it is also backward, or instead of the second - the third, which will lead to a breakdown of the gearbox. You need to bring the switching skill to automaticity so that you can switch with your eyes closed,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. In addition to difficulties in changing gears, the four-speed gearbox was characterized as weak and unreliable, often breaking down. The gear teeth colliding during switching broke, and even ruptures of the gearbox housing were noted. Engineers from the NIIBT test site in Kubinka, in a lengthy report in 1942 on joint tests of domestic, captured and Lend-Lease equipment, gave the T-34 gearbox of the early series a simply derogatory assessment: “The gearboxes of domestic tanks, especially the T-34 and KB, are not fully satisfy the requirements for modern combat vehicles, inferior to the gearboxes of both allied and enemy tanks, and are at least several years behind the development of tank building technology.” Based on the results of these and other reports on the shortcomings of the T-34, the State Defense Committee issued a decree of June 5, 1942, “On improving the quality of T-34 tanks.” As part of the implementation of this decree, by the beginning of 1943, the design department of plant No. 183 (the Kharkov plant evacuated to the Urals) developed a five-speed gearbox with constant gear meshing, which tankers who fought on the T-34 speak with such respect.

The constant engagement of gears and the introduction of another gear made it much easier to control the tank, and the gunner-radio operator no longer had to pick up and pull the lever together with the driver to change gear.

Another element of the T-34 transmission, which made the combat vehicle dependent on the training of the driver, was the main clutch that connected the gearbox to the engine. This is how A.V. Bodnar, who trained driver mechanics on the T-34 after being wounded, describes the situation: “Very much depended on how well the main clutch was adjusted for freewheeling and disengagement and how well the driver could use it when starts moving. The last third of the pedal must be released slowly so as not to rip, because if it rips, the car will slip and the clutch will warp.” The main part of the main dry friction clutch of the T-34 tank was a package of 8 driving and 10 driven disks (later, as part of the improvement of the tank’s transmission, it received 11 driving and 11 driven disks), pressed against each other by springs. Incorrect disengagement of the clutch with friction of the discs against each other, their heating and warping could lead to failure of the tank. Such a breakdown was called “burning the clutch,” although formally there were no flammable objects in it. While ahead of other countries in putting into practice such solutions as the 76-mm long-barreled gun and inclined armor, the T-34 tank still noticeably lagged behind Germany and other countries in the design of the transmission and turning mechanisms. On German tanks, which were the same age as the T-34, the main clutch had discs running in oil. This made it possible to more effectively remove heat from the rubbing discs and made it much easier to turn the clutch on and off. The situation was somewhat improved by the servomechanism that was equipped with the main clutch release pedal, based on the experience of combat use of the T-34 in the initial period of the war. The design of the mechanism, despite the “servo” prefix that inspires some reverence, was quite simple. The clutch pedal was held by a spring, which, in the process of pressing the pedal, passed the dead center and changed the direction of the force. When the tanker pressed the pedal, the spring resisted pressure. At a certain moment, on the contrary, she began to help and pulled the pedal towards herself, ensuring the desired speed of movement of the scenes. Before the introduction of these simple but necessary elements, the work of the second tank crew in the hierarchy was very difficult. “During the long march, the driver lost two or three kilograms in weight. I was all exhausted. This, of course, was very difficult,” recalls P.I. Kirichenko. While on the march, the driver’s mistakes could lead to delays along the way due to repairs of one duration or another, or, in extreme cases, to the abandonment of the tank by the crew, then in battle, failure of the T-34 transmission due to driver errors could lead to fatal consequences. On the contrary, the skill of the driver and vigorous maneuvering could ensure the survival of the crew under heavy fire.

The development of the design of the T-34 tank during the war went primarily in the direction of improving the transmission. In the 1942 report of engineers from the NIIBT test site in Kubinka, cited above, there were the following words: “Recently, due to the strengthening of anti-tank equipment, maneuverability is at least no less a guarantee of the invulnerability of a vehicle than powerful armor. The combination of good vehicle armor and the speed of its maneuver is the main means of protecting a modern combat vehicle from anti-tank artillery fire.” The advantage in armor protection lost by the final period of the war was compensated by the improvement in the driving performance of the Thirty-Four. The tank began to move faster both on the march and on the battlefield, and maneuver better. To the two features that tankers believed in (the slope of the armor and the diesel engine), a third was added - speed. A.K. Rodkin, who fought on the T-34-85 tank at the end of the war, formulated it this way: “The tank crews had this saying: “Armor is garbage, but our tanks are fast.” We had an advantage in speed. The Germans had gasoline tanks, but their speed was not very high.”

The first task of the 76.2-mm F-34 tank gun was “to destroy tanks and other mechanized vehicles of the enemy.” Veteran tankers unanimously call German tanks the main and most serious enemy. In the initial period of the war, the T-34 crews confidently went into battle with any German tanks, rightly believing that a powerful gun and reliable armor protection would ensure success in battle. The appearance of the Tigers and Panthers on the battlefield changed the situation to the opposite. Now German tanks received a “long arm”, allowing them to fight without worrying about camouflage. “Taking advantage of the fact that we have 76-mm cannons, which can take their armor head-on only from 500 meters, they stood in the open,” recalls platoon commander Lieutenant Nikolai Yakovlevich Zheleznoye. Even sub-caliber shells for the 76-mm cannon did not provide advantages in a duel of this kind, since they penetrated only 90 mm of homogeneous armor at a distance of 500 meters, while the frontal armor of the T-VIH "Tiger" had a thickness of 102 mm. The transition to an 85 mm gun immediately changed the situation, allowing Soviet tankers to fight new German tanks at distances of over a kilometer. “Well, when the T-34-85 appeared, it was already possible to go one-on-one,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov. A powerful 85-mm gun allowed the T-34 crews to fight with their old friends T-IV at a distance of 1200 - 1300 m. We can find an example of such a battle on the Sandomierz bridgehead in the summer of 1944 in the memoirs of N. Ya. Zheleznov. The first T-34 tanks with the 85-mm D-5T gun rolled off the assembly line of plant No. 112 "Krasnoe Sormovo" in January 1944. Mass production of the T-34-85 with the 85-mm ZIS-S-53 gun began in March 1944, when tanks of a new type were built at the flagship of the Soviet tank building during the war, plant No. 183 in Nizhny Tagil. Despite a certain rush to re-equip the tank with an 85-mm gun, the 85-mm gun, which was included in the mass production, was considered reliable by the crews and did not cause any complaints.

Vertical guidance of the T-34's gun was carried out manually, and an electric drive was introduced to rotate the turret from the very beginning of the tank's production. However, tankers in battle preferred to rotate the turret manually. “The hands lie crosswise on the mechanisms for turning the turret and aiming the gun. The turret could be turned by an electric motor, but in battle you forget about this. You turn the handle,” recalls G. N. Krivov. This is easy to explain. On the T-34-85, which G.N. Krivov talks about, the manual rotation handle for the turret simultaneously served as a lever for the electric drive. To switch from a manual drive to an electric one, it was necessary to turn the turret rotation handle vertically and move it back and forth, forcing the engine to rotate the turret in the desired direction. In the heat of battle, this was forgotten, and the handle was used only for manual rotation. In addition, as V.P. Bryukhov recalls: “You need to know how to use an electric turn, otherwise you’ll jerk, and then you have to turn it further.”

The only inconvenience caused by the introduction of the 85 mm gun was the need to carefully ensure that the long barrel did not touch the ground on potholes in the road or battlefield. “The T-34-85 has a barrel four or more meters long. In the slightest ditch, the tank can peck and grab the ground with its barrel. If you shoot after this, the trunk opens with petals in different directions, like a flower,” recalls A.K. Rodkin. The total length of the barrel of the 85-mm tank gun of the 1944 model was more than four meters, 4645 mm. The appearance of the 85-mm gun and new rounds for it also led to the fact that the tank stopped exploding with the turret falling off, “... they (shells. - A. M.) do not detonate, but explode one by one. On the T-34-76, if one shell explodes, then the entire ammunition rack detonates,” says A.K. Rodkin. This to some extent increased the chances of survival for the T-34 crew members, and from photographs and newsreels of the war the picture that sometimes flashed in the footage of 1941 - 1943 disappeared - a T-34 with the turret lying next to the tank or turned upside down after falling back onto the tank .

If German tanks were the most dangerous enemy of the T-34s, then the T-34s themselves were an effective means of destroying not only armored vehicles, but also enemy guns and manpower that were hindering the advance of their infantry. Most of the tankers, whose memories are given in the book, have at best several units of enemy armored vehicles, but at the same time, the number of enemy infantrymen shot from a cannon and machine gun is in the tens and hundreds of people. The ammunition of the T-34 tanks consisted mainly of high-explosive fragmentation shells. Standard ammunition of the "thirty-four" with a "nut" turret in 1942 - 1944. consisted of 100 rounds, including 75 high-explosive fragmentation and 25 armor-piercing (of which 4 sub-caliber since 1943). The standard ammunition of the T-34-85 tank included 36 high-explosive fragmentation rounds, 14 armor-piercing rounds and 5 sub-caliber rounds. The balance between armor-piercing and high-explosive fragmentation shells largely reflects the conditions in which the T-34 fought during the attack. Under heavy artillery fire, tankers in most cases had little time for aimed shooting and fired on the move and in short stops, counting on suppressing the enemy with a mass of shots or hitting the target with several shells. G. N. Krivov recalls: “Experienced guys who have already been in battle tell us: “Never stop. Strike on the move. Heaven and earth, where the projectile flies - hit, press.” You asked how many shells I fired in the first battle? Half the ammunition. Beat, beat..."

As often happens, practice suggested techniques that were not provided for in any charters or methodological manuals. A typical example is the use of the clang of a closing bolt as an internal alarm in a tank. V.P. Bryukhov says: “When the crew is well-coordinated, the mechanic is strong, he himself hears what kind of projectile is being driven, the click of the bolt wedge, it is also heavy, more than two pounds...” The guns mounted on the T-34 tank were equipped with semi-automatic opening shutter This system worked as follows. When fired, the gun rolled back; after absorbing the recoil energy, the knurl returned the body of the gun to its original position. Just before the return, the lever of the shutter mechanism ran into the copier on the gun carriage, and the wedge went down, the ejector legs associated with it knocked the empty shell casing out of the breech. The loader sent the next projectile, which with its mass knocked down the bolt wedge, which was held on the ejector legs. The heavy part, under the influence of powerful springs sharply returning to its original position, produced a fairly sharp sound that covered the roar of the engine, the clanging of the chassis and the sounds of combat. Hearing the clang of the shutter closing, the driver, without waiting for the command “Short!”, chose a fairly flat area of ​​terrain for a short stop and an aimed shot. The location of the ammunition in the tank did not cause any inconvenience to the loaders. Shells could be taken both from stowage in the turret and from “suitcases” on the floor of the fighting compartment.

The target that appeared in the crosshairs of the sight was not always worthy of being fired from a gun. The commander of the T-34-76 or the gunner of the T-34-85 fired at the German infantrymen running or caught in the open space from a machine gun coaxial with the cannon. The front-mounted machine gun installed in the hull could only be used effectively in close combat, when the tank, immobilized for one reason or another, was surrounded by enemy infantry with grenades and Molotov cocktails. “This is a melee weapon when the tank is hit and stops. The Germans are approaching, and you can mow them down, be healthy,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. While on the move, it was almost impossible to shoot from a course machine gun, since the telescopic sight of the machine gun provided negligible opportunities for observation and aiming. “And I, in fact, didn’t have any sight. I have such a hole there, you can’t see a damn thing through it,” recalls P.I. Kirichenko. Perhaps the most effective machine gun was used when it was removed from the ball mount and used for firing from a bipod outside the tank. “And it began. They pulled out the frontal machine gun - they came at us from the rear. The tower was turned around. The machine gunner is with me. We placed a machine gun on the parapet and fired,” recalls Nikolai Nikolaevich Kuzmichev. In fact, the tank received a machine gun, which could be used by the crew as the most effective personal weapon.

Installing a radio on the T-34-85 tank in the turret next to the tank commander was supposed to finally turn the gunner-radio operator into the most useless member of the tank crew, the “passenger”. The ammunition load of the machine guns of the T-34-85 tank, compared to earlier tanks, was more than halved, to 31 discs. However, the realities of the final period of the war, when the German infantry acquired Faust cartridges, on the contrary, increased the usefulness of the machine gun shooter. “By the end of the war, he became needed, protecting against the Faustians, clearing the way. So what, what is hard to see, sometimes the mechanic would tell him. If you want to see, you will see,” recalls A.K. Rodkin.

In such a situation, the space freed up after moving the radio into the tower was used to place ammunition. Most (27 out of 31) discs for the DT machine gun in the T-34-85 were placed in the control compartment, next to the shooter, who became the main consumer of machine gun cartridges.

In general, the appearance of Faust cartridges increased the role of the “thirty-four” small arms. Even shooting at Faustniks with a pistol with the hatch open began to be practiced. The standard personal weapons of the crews were TT pistols, revolvers, captured pistols and one PPSh submachine gun, for which a place was provided in the equipment stowage in the tank. The submachine gun was used by crews when leaving the tank and in battle in the city, when the elevation angle of the gun and machine guns was not enough.

As German anti-tank artillery strengthened, visibility became an increasingly important component of tank survivability. The difficulties that the commander and driver of the T-34 tank experienced in their combat work were largely due to the meager capabilities of observing the battlefield. The first "thirty-fours" had mirrored periscopes on the driver and in the tank's turret. Such a device was a box with mirrors mounted at an angle at the top and bottom, and the mirrors were not glass (they could crack from shell impacts), but made of polished steel. The image quality in such a periscope is not difficult to imagine. The same mirrors were in the periscopes on the sides of the turret, which were one of the main means of observing the battlefield for the tank commander. In the above-quoted letter from S.K. Timoshenko dated November 6, 1940, there are the following words: “The driver and radio operator’s viewing devices should be replaced with more modern ones.” During the first year of the war, tankers fought with mirrors; later, instead of mirrors, prismatic observation devices were installed, i.e., a solid glass prism ran the entire height of the periscope. At the same time, limited visibility, despite the improvement in the characteristics of the periscopes themselves, often forced T-34 drivers to drive with the hatches open. “The triplexes on the driver’s hatch were completely ugly. They were made of disgusting yellow or green plexiglass, which gave a completely distorted, wavy image. It was impossible to disassemble anything through such a triplex, especially in a jumping tank. Therefore, the war was waged with the hatches slightly open,” recalls S. L. Ariya. A. V. Maryevsky also agrees with him, also pointing out that the driver’s triplexes were easily splashed with mud.

In the fall of 1942, NII-48 specialists, based on the results of an analysis of damage to armor protection, made the following conclusion: “A significant percentage of dangerous damage to T-34 tanks was on the side parts, and not on the frontal parts (out of 432 hits to the hull of the tanks studied, 270 were on its sides. - A. AND.) can be explained either by the tank crews’ poor familiarity with the tactical characteristics of their armor protection, or by poor visibility from them, due to which the crew cannot timely detect the firing point and turn the tank into a position that is least dangerous for breaking through its armor.

It is necessary to improve the familiarity of tank crews with the tactical characteristics of the armor of their vehicles and provide the best overview of them(emphasis mine. - A.I.).”

The problem of providing better visibility was solved in several stages. Polished steel “mirrors” were also removed from the commander’s and loader’s observation devices. The periscopes on the cheekbones of the T-34 turret were replaced by slits with blocks of glass to protect against fragments. This happened during the transition to the “nut” turret in the fall of 1942. New devices allowed the crew to organize all-round monitoring of the situation: “The driver is watching forward and to the left. You, commander, try to observe all around. And the radio operator and loader are more on the right” (V.P. Bryukhov). The T-34-85 was equipped with MK-4 surveillance devices for the gunner and loader. Simultaneous observation of several directions made it possible to timely notice danger and adequately respond to it with fire or maneuver.

The problem that took the longest to solve was providing a good view for the tank commander. The point about introducing a commander’s cupola on the T-34, which was already present in S.K. Timoshenko’s letter in 1940, was implemented almost two years after the start of the war. After much experimentation with attempts to squeeze the freed tank commander into the “nut” turret, turrets on the T-34 began to be installed only in the summer of 1943. The commander still had the function of a gunner, but now he could raise his head from the sight eyepiece and look around. The main advantage of the turret was the possibility of all-round visibility. “The commander’s cupola rotated around, the commander saw everything and, without firing, could control the fire of his tank and maintain communication with others,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. To be precise, it was not the turret itself that rotated, but its roof with a periscope observation device. Before this, in 1941 - 1942, the tank commander, in addition to the “mirror” on the cheekbone of the turret, had a periscope, formally called a periscope sight. By rotating its vernier, the commander could provide himself with a view of the battlefield, but a very limited one. “In the spring of 1942, there was a commander’s panorama on the KB and the T-34s. I could rotate it and see everything around, but it was still a very small sector,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. The commander of the T-34-85 tank with the ZIS-S-53 cannon, relieved of his duties as a gunner, received, in addition to the commander's cupola with slits along the perimeter, his own prismatic periscope rotating in the hatch - MK-4, which even allowed him to look behind him. But among tankers there is also the following opinion: “I didn’t use the commander’s cupola. I always kept the hatch open. Because those who closed them burned down. We didn’t have time to jump out,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov.

Without exception, all tankers surveyed admire the sights of German tank guns. As an example, let us cite the memoirs of V.P. Bryukhov: “We have always noted the high-quality Zeiss optics of sights. And until the end of the war it was of high quality. We didn't have such optics. The sights themselves were more convenient than ours. We have a reticle in the form of a triangle, and to the right and left of it are marks. They had these divisions, corrections for wind, for range, and something else.” Here it must be said that in terms of information there was no fundamental difference between the Soviet and German telescopic sights of the gun. The gunner saw the aiming mark and, on both sides of it, “fences” for angular velocity corrections. The Soviet and German sights had a range correction, but it was introduced in different ways. In the German sight, the gunner rotated the pointer, aligning it opposite the radial distance scale. Each type of projectile had its own sector. Soviet tank builders passed this stage in the 1930s; the sight of the three-turret T-28 tank had a similar design. In the “thirty-four” the distance was set by a sight thread moving along vertically located range scales. So, functionally, the Soviet and German sights did not differ. The difference was in the quality of the optics itself, which especially deteriorated in 1942 due to the evacuation of the Izyum optical glass plant. Among the real disadvantages of the telescopic sights of the early “thirty-fours” is their alignment with the gun barrel. Pointing the gun vertically, the tanker was forced to rise or fall in his place, keeping his eyes on the eyepiece of the sight moving with the gun. Later on the T-34-85, a “breakable” sight, characteristic of German tanks, was introduced, the eyepiece of which was fixed, and the lens followed the gun barrel due to a hinge on the same axis with the gun trunnions.

Shortcomings in the design of observation devices had a negative impact on the habitability of the tank. The need to keep the driver's hatch open forced the latter to sit behind the levers, “also taking on the chest the flow of freezing wind sucked in by the fan turbine roaring behind him” (S. L. Aria). In this case, the “turbine” was a fan on the engine shaft that sucked air from the fighting compartment through a flimsy engine bulkhead.

A typical complaint about Soviet-made military equipment from both foreign and domestic specialists was the Spartan environment inside the vehicle. “As a disadvantage, we can highlight the complete lack of comfort for the crew. I climbed into American and British tanks. There the crew was in more comfortable conditions: the inside of the tanks was painted with light paint, the seats were semi-soft with armrests. There was none of this on the T-34,” recalls S. L. Ariya.

There really were no armrests on the crew seats in the turret of the T-34-76 and T-34-85. They were only in the seats of the driver and radio operator. However, the armrests themselves on the crew seats were a detail characteristic primarily of American technology. Neither English nor German tanks (with the exception of the Tiger) had crew seats in the turret with armrests.

But there were also real design flaws. One of the problems faced by the creators of tanks in the 1940s was the penetration of gunpowder gases into the tank from increasingly powerful guns. After the shot, the bolt opened, ejected the cartridge case, and gases from the gun barrel and the ejected cartridge case entered the fighting compartment of the vehicle. “... You shout: “armor-piercing!”, “fragmentation!” You look, and he (loader. - A. M.) lies on the ammunition rack. He got burned by the powder gases and lost consciousness. When the battle was tough, rarely did anyone survive it. Still, you get burned,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov.

Electric exhaust fans were used to remove powder gases and ventilate the fighting compartment. The first T-34s inherited from the BT tank one fan in the front of the turret. It looked appropriate in a turret with a 45 mm gun, since it was located almost above the breech of the gun. In the T-34 turret, the fan was not above the breech, which was smoking after the shot, but above the gun barrel. Its effectiveness in this regard was questionable. But in 1942, at the peak of the shortage of components, the tank lost even this - T-34s left the factories with empty turret caps, there were simply no fans.

During the modernization of the tank with the installation of a turret-or-nut, the fan was moved to the rear of the turret, closer to the area where powder gases accumulated. The T-34-85 tank already received two fans in the rear of the turret; the larger caliber of the gun required intensive ventilation of the fighting compartment. But during the intense battle, the fans did not help. The problem of protecting the crew from powder gases was partially solved by blowing the barrel with compressed air (Panther), but it was impossible to blow through the cartridge case, which spreads choking smoke. According to the memoirs of G.N. Krivov, experienced tank crews advised to immediately throw the cartridge case through the loader’s hatch. The problem was radically solved only after the war, when an ejector was introduced into the design of the guns, which “pumped out” gases from the gun barrel after the shot, even before the automatic shutter was opened.

The T-34 tank was in many ways a revolutionary design, and like any transitional model, it combined new items and forced, soon outdated, solutions. One of these decisions was the introduction of a radio operator gunner into the crew. The main function of the tankman sitting at the ineffective machine gun was to maintain the tank radio station. On early "thirty-fours" the radio station was installed on the right side of the control compartment, next to the gunner-radio operator. The need to keep a person on the crew involved in setting up and maintaining the functionality of the radio was a consequence of the imperfection of communications technology in the first half of the war. The point was not that it was necessary to work with a key: the Soviet tank radio stations installed on the T-34 did not have a telegraph mode and could not transmit dashes and dots in Morse code. The gunner-radio operator was introduced because the main consumer of information from neighboring vehicles and from higher levels of control, the tank commander, was simply not able to carry out maintenance of the radio. “The station was unreliable. The radio operator is a specialist, but the commander is not such a specialist. In addition, when the armor was hit, the wave was disrupted and the lamps failed,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. It should be added that the commander of the T-34 with a 76-mm cannon combined the functions of a tank commander and gunner and was too heavily loaded to deal with even a simple and convenient radio station. The allocation of a separate person to work with the walkie-talkie was also typical for other countries that participated in the Second World War. For example, on the French Somua S-35 tank, the commander performed the functions of gunner, loader and tank commander, but there was also a radio operator who was freed even from servicing the machine gun.

In the initial period of the war, the “thirty-four” were equipped with 71-TK-Z radio stations, and not all vehicles. The last fact should not be confusing; such a situation was common in the Wehrmacht, whose radio coverage is usually greatly exaggerated. In reality, unit commanders from the platoon and above had transceivers. According to the staff of February 1941, the light tank company had Fu transceivers. 5 were installed on three T-I and five T-III, and on two T-I and twelve T-III only Fu receivers were installed. 2. In a company of medium tanks, five T-IV and three T-III had transceivers, and two T-N and nine T-IV were only receivers. On T-l transceivers Fu. 5 were not installed at all, with the exception of special commander kIT-Bef. Wg. l. The Red Army had an essentially similar concept of “radio” and “linear” tanks. The crews of “linear” tanks had to act while observing the commander’s maneuvers, or receive orders with flags. The space for the radio station on the “linear” tanks was filled with disks for DT machine gun magazines, 77 disks with a capacity of 63 rounds each instead of 46 on the “radium” tank. On June 1, 1941, the Red Army had 671 “linear” T-34 tanks and 221 “radio” tanks.

But the main problem with the communications equipment of T-34 tanks in 1941 - 1942 was it was not so much their quantity as the quality of the 71-TK-Z stations themselves. Tankers assessed its capabilities as very moderate. “She covered about 6 kilometers while moving” (P.I. Kirichenko). Other tankers express the same opinion. “Radio station 71-TK-Z, as I remember now, is a complex, unstable radio station. It broke down very often, and it was very difficult to put it in order,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. At the same time, the radio station to some extent compensated for the information vacuum, since it made it possible to listen to reports transmitted from Moscow, the famous “From the Soviet Information Bureau ...” in the voice of Levitan. A serious deterioration of the situation was observed during the evacuation of radio equipment factories, when from August 1941 the production of tank radios was practically stopped until mid-1942.

As evacuated enterprises returned to operation by the middle of the war, there was a trend toward 100 percent radioization of tank forces. The crews of the T-34 tanks received a new radio station, developed on the basis of the aviation RSI-4 - 9P, and later its modernized versions, 9RS and 9RM. It was much more stable in operation due to the use of quartz frequency generators. The radio station was of English origin and was produced for a long time using components supplied under Lend-Lease. On the T-34-85, the radio station moved from the control compartment to the combat compartment, to the left wall of the turret, where the commander, relieved of the duties of a gunner, now began servicing it. Nevertheless, the concepts of “linear” and “radium” tank remained.

In addition to communication with the outside world, each tank had equipment for internal communication. The reliability of the early T-34 intercom was low; the main means of signaling between the commander and the driver were boots mounted on the shoulders. “The internal communication was not working properly. Therefore, communication was carried out with my feet, that is, I had the boots of the tank commander on my shoulders, he pressed on my left or right shoulder, respectively, I turned the tank to the left or to the right,” recalls S. L. Ariya. The commander and the loader could talk, although more often communication took place with gestures: “I put a fist under the loader’s nose, and he already knows that he needs to load with armor-piercing, and his outstretched palm with fragmentation.” The TPU-Zbis intercom installed on the T-34 of later series worked much better. “The internal tank intercom was mediocre on the T-34-76. There you had to command with your boots and hands, but on the T-34-85 it was already excellent,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov. Therefore, the commander began to give orders to the driver by voice over the intercom - the T-34-85 commander no longer had the technical ability to put boots on his shoulders - the gunner separated him from the control department.

Speaking about the communications equipment of the T-34 tank, it is also necessary to note the following. The story of a German tank commander challenging our tankman to a duel in broken Russian travels from films to books and back again. This is completely untrue. All Wehrmacht tanks since 1937 used the range 27 - 32 MHz, which did not overlap with the range of radio stations of Soviet tank radio stations - 3.75 - 6.0 MHz. Only on command tanks was a second shortwave radio station installed. It had a range of 1 - 3 MHz, again, incompatible with the range of our tank radios.

The commander of a German tank battalion, as a rule, had something to do other than challenges to a duel. In addition, command tanks were often of obsolete types, and in the initial period of the war - without weapons at all, with mock-up guns in a fixed turret.

The engine and its systems caused virtually no complaints from the crews, unlike the transmission. “I’ll tell you frankly, the T-34 is the most reliable tank. It happens that he stopped, something was wrong with him. The oil broke. The hose is not securely fastened. For this purpose, a thorough inspection of the tanks was always carried out before the march,” recalls A. S. Burtsev. A massive fan mounted in the same block with the main clutch required caution in engine control. Errors by the driver could lead to the destruction of the fan and failure of the tank.

Also, some difficulties were caused by the initial period of operation of the resulting tank, getting used to the characteristics of a particular instance of the T-34 tank. “Every vehicle, every tank, every tank gun, every engine had its own unique features. They cannot be known in advance; they can only be identified during everyday use. At the front we found ourselves in unfamiliar cars. The commander does not know what kind of fight his gun has. The mechanic doesn't know what his diesel can and can't do. Of course, at the factories the tanks' guns were shot and a 50-kilometer run was carried out, but this was completely insufficient. Of course, we tried to get to know our cars better before the battle and used every opportunity to do this,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov.

Tank crews encountered significant technical difficulties when mating the engine and gearbox with the power plant during tank repairs in the field. It was. In addition to replacing or repairing the gearbox and engine itself, the gearbox had to be removed from the tank when the onboard clutches were dismantled. After returning to place or replacing, the engine and gearbox had to be installed in the tank relative to each other with high precision. According to the repair manual for the T-34 tank, the installation accuracy should have been 0.8 mm. To install units moved using 0.75-ton hoists, such precision required time and effort.

Of the entire complex of components and assemblies of the power plant, only the engine air filter had design flaws that required serious modification. The old type filter, installed on T-34 tanks in 1941 - 1942, did not clean the air well and interfered with the normal operation of the engine, which led to rapid wear of the V-2. “Old air filters were inefficient, took up a lot of space in the engine compartment, and had a large turbine. They often had to be cleaned, even when not walking along a dusty road. And “Cyclone” was very good,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. Cyclone filters performed well in 1944 - 1945, when Soviet tank crews fought hundreds of kilometers. “If the air cleaner was cleaned according to regulations, the engine worked well. But during battles it is not always possible to do everything correctly. If the air cleaner does not clean enough, the oil is not changed on time, the rig is not washed and allows dust to pass through, then the engine wears out quickly,” recalls A.K. Rodkin. “Cyclones” made it possible, even in the absence of time for maintenance, to complete an entire operation before the engine failed.

Tankers always respond positively to the duplicated engine starting system. In addition to the traditional electric starter, the tank had two 10-liter compressed air cylinders. The air starting system made it possible to start the engine even if the electric starter failed, which often occurred in battle due to shell impacts.

Track chains were the most frequently repaired element of the T-34 tank. The tracks were a spare part with which the tank even went into battle. The caterpillars sometimes tore during the march and were broken by shell hits. “The tracks were torn, even without bullets, without shells. When soil gets between the rollers, the caterpillar, especially when turning, is stretched to such an extent that the fingers and the tracks themselves cannot withstand it,” recalls A. V. Maryevsky. Repair and tension of the caterpillar were inevitable companions to the combat operation of the vehicle. At the same time, the caterpillars were a serious unmasking factor. “The Thirty-four, it not only roars with diesel, it also clacks with its tracks. If a T-34 is approaching, you will hear the clatter of the tracks first, and then the engine. The fact is that the teeth of the working tracks must fit exactly between the rollers on the drive wheel, which, when rotating, grabs them. And when the caterpillar stretched, developed, became longer, the distance between the teeth increased, and the teeth hit the roller, causing a characteristic sound,” recalls A.K. Rodkin. Forced wartime technical solutions contributed to the increased noise level of the tank, primarily rollers without rubber bands around the perimeter. “... Unfortunately, the Stalingrad “thirty-fours” arrived, whose road wheels were without tires. They rumbled terribly,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. These were the so-called rollers with internal shock absorption. The first rollers of this type, sometimes called “locomotive”, were produced by the Stalingrad Plant (STZ), even before really serious interruptions in the supply of rubber began. The early onset of cold weather in the fall of 1941 led to idle time on the ice-bound rivers of barges with rollers, which were sent along the Volga from Stalingrad to the Yaroslavl tire plant. The technology involved the production of a bandage using special equipment on a ready-made skating rink. Large batches of finished rollers from Yaroslavl got stuck in transit, which forced STZ engineers to look for a replacement, which was a solid cast roller with a small shock-absorbing ring inside it, closer to the hub. When interruptions in the supply of rubber began, other factories took advantage of this experience, and from the winter of 1941 - 1942 until the autumn of 1943, T-34 tanks rolled off the assembly lines, the chassis of which consisted entirely or mostly of rollers with internal shock absorption. Since the fall of 1943, the problem of rubber shortages has finally become a thing of the past, and T-34-76 tanks have completely returned to rollers with rubber tires.

All T-34-85 tanks were produced with rollers with rubber tires. This significantly reduced the noise of the tank, providing relative comfort to the crew and making it difficult for the enemy to detect the T-34s.

It is especially worth mentioning that during the war years the role of the T-34 tank in the Red Army changed. At the beginning of the war, "thirty-fours" with an imperfect transmission, which could not withstand long marches, but were well armored, were ideal tanks for direct infantry support. During the war, the tank lost the advantage in armor it had at the start of hostilities. By the autumn of 1943 - early 1944, the T-34 tank was a relatively easy target for 75-mm tank and anti-tank guns; hits from 88-mm Tiger guns, anti-aircraft guns and PAK-43 anti-tank guns were definitely lethal for it.

But elements were steadily improved and even completely replaced, which before the war were not given due importance or simply did not have time to bring to an acceptable level. First of all, this is the power plant and transmission of the tank, from which they achieved stable and trouble-free operation. At the same time, all these elements of the tank retained good maintainability and ease of operation. All this allowed the T-34 to do things that were unrealistic for the “thirty-four” in the first year of the war. “For example, from near Jelgava, moving through East Prussia, we covered more than 500 km in three days. The T-34 withstood such marches normally,” recalls A.K. Rodkin. For T-34 tanks in 1941, a 500-kilometer march would have been almost fatal. In June 1941, the 8th Mechanized Corps under the command of D.I. Ryabyshev, after such a march from its permanent deployment sites to the Dubno area, lost almost half of its equipment on the road due to breakdowns. A.V. Bodnar, who fought in 1941 - 1942, evaluates the T-34 in comparison with German tanks: “From the point of view of operation, German armored vehicles were more advanced, they failed less often. For the Germans, walking 200 km did not cost anything; on the T-34 you will definitely lose something, something will break. The technological equipment of their vehicles was stronger, but their combat equipment was worse.”

By the fall of 1943, the Thirty-Fours had become an ideal tank for independent mechanized formations designed for deep breakthroughs and detours. They became the main combat vehicle of tank armies - the main tools for offensive operations on a colossal scale. In these operations, the main type of T-34 action was marching with the driver's hatches open, and often with the headlights on. The tanks covered hundreds of kilometers, intercepting the escape routes of the surrounded German divisions and corps.

Essentially, in 1944 - 1945 the situation of the “blitzkrieg” of 1941 was mirrored, when the Wehrmacht reached Moscow and Leningrad on tanks with far from the best characteristics of armor protection and weapons at that time, but mechanically very reliable. In the same way, in the final period of the war, the T-34-85 covered hundreds of kilometers in deep envelopments and detours, and the Tigers and Panthers trying to stop them failed en masse due to breakdowns and were abandoned by their crews due to lack of fuel. Perhaps only the weapons broke the symmetry of the picture. Unlike the German tank crews of the “Blitzkrieg” period, the crews of the “thirty-four” had in their hands an adequate means of combating enemy tanks with superior armor protection - an 85-mm cannon. Moreover, each commander of the T-34-85 tank received a reliable radio station, quite advanced for that time, which allowed him to play against the German “cats” as a team.

The T-34s that entered the battle in the first days of the war near the border and the T-34s that burst into the streets of Berlin in April 1945, although they had the same name, were significantly different both externally and internally. But both in the initial period of the war and at its final stage, tank crews saw the “thirty-four” as a machine they could believe in. At first, these were the slope of the armor that reflected enemy shells, a fire-resistant diesel engine and an all-destructive weapon. During the period of victories, it means high speed, reliability, stable communication and a gun that can stand up for itself.

COMBAT VEHICLE CREW

I used to think: "Lieutenant"

sounds like this: “Pour it for us!”

And, knowing the topography,

he stomps on the gravel.

War is not fireworks at all,

but it’s just hard work...

Mikhail Kulchitsky

In the 1930s, the military was extremely popular in the USSR. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the Red Army, its soldiers and officers symbolized the power of the relatively young Soviet state, which in just a few years had transformed from a war-ravaged, impoverished agricultural country into an industrial power that seemed capable of standing up for itself. Secondly, it was one of the most affluent segments of the population. For example, an instructor at an aviation school, in addition to full maintenance (uniforms, lunches in the canteen, transport, dormitory or money for rent), received a very high salary - about seven hundred rubles (a loaf of white bread cost one ruble seventy kopecks, and a kilogram of first-grade beef - twelve rubles). But in the country, the rationing system for food distribution was abolished only in the late 30s. It was difficult to buy more or less decent clothes. In winter, people wore “remade” clothes, that is, altered from old, pre-revolutionary clothes; in the summer, they sported old Red Army uniforms or put on linen trousers and canvas shoes. In the cities they lived crowdedly - fifty families in former lordly apartments, and almost no new housing was built. In addition, for those coming from a peasant environment, military service provided a chance to improve their education and master a new specialty. The tank commander, Lieutenant Alexander Sergeevich Burtsev, recalls: “Each of us dreamed of serving in the army. I remember that after three years of service they returned from the army as different people. The village idiot left, and a literate, cultured man returned, well dressed, in a tunic, trousers, boots, physically stronger. He could work with equipment and lead. When a serviceman came from the army, as they were called, the whole village gathered. The family was proud that he served in the army, that he became such a person. That’s what the army gave.” Against this background, propaganda about the invincibility of the Red Army was easily perceived. People sincerely believed that “we will beat the enemy with little blood on foreign territory.” The coming new war - the war of engines - also created new propaganda images. If ten years ago every boy imagined himself on horseback with a saber in his hand, rushing in a swift cavalry attack, then by the end of the 30s this romantic image was forever supplanted by fighter pilots sitting in high-speed monoplanes, and tank crews driving formidable squat combat vehicles. Piloting a fighter jet or shooting the enemy from a tank gun in the inevitable future war was the dream of thousands of Soviet boys. “Guys, let’s join the tank crews! It's an honor! You go, the whole country is under you! And you are on an iron horse!” - recalls the platoon commander, Lieutenant Nikolai Yakovlevich Zheleznov.

The pilots and tank crews even looked different from the bulk of the military. The pilots wore blue uniforms, and the tankers wore steel-gray uniforms, so their appearance on the streets of cities and towns did not go unnoticed. They stood out not only for their beautiful uniforms, but also for the abundance of orders, which at that time were extremely rare, because they were active participants in many “small wars” to which the USSR had a secret or overt relationship.

They were glorified in films such as “Hot Days”, “If Tomorrow is War”, “Fighters”, “Squadron Number Five”, etc. Romantic images of tankers and pilots were created by such superstars of Soviet cinema as Nikolai Kryuchkov, Nikolai Simonov. Kryuchkov in “Tractor Drivers” plays a demobilized tank driver, for whom any roads are open “in civilian life.” The key point of the film is the story of its hero, Klim Yarko, to the collective farmers about the speed and power of tanks. The picture ends with a wedding scene between a tanker and the best girl on the collective farm. At the end, the whole wedding party sings the most popular song of those times: “The armor is strong and our tanks are fast.” “Hot Days” tells the story of a tank crew that stops for repairs in a village. The main character is the crew commander. He is a former shepherd. Only military service opened up broad prospects for him. Now the most beautiful girls love him, he is wearing a luxurious leather jacket (until the mid-30s, Soviet tank crews wore black leather jackets from the “tsarist” reserves). Of course, in the event of war, the hero will defeat any enemy with the same ease with which he conquered women’s hearts or achieved success in combat and political training.

However, the war that began on June 22, 1941 turned out to be completely different from how it was shown on movie screens. Young people - namely, young people were those whose memories are collected in this book - and people who grew up, such as flying club instructor Vasily Borisovich Emelianenko, who met the war in Nikolaev, were afraid of not having time to fight: “... following the regiment commander, two a bearded man holding a red banner high. It had a breathtaking inscription on it: “To Berlin!”... we must keep up with Major Zmozhnykh, who has already led his horsemen to Berlin!” Huge lines of patriots lined up at the military registration and enlistment offices, eager to quickly get to the front to beat the fascists. Some of them immediately went to the front line, while others went to schools, including tank schools.

At this time, the Red Army suffered heavy defeats. The tank crews, among others, took the first blows from the Nazis. Mikhail Fedorovich Savkin, a training company cadet who participated in his T-34 in the battle near Radzekhov on June 23, recalls: “The tanks attacked the German artillery. The Germans fired from large-caliber and anti-aircraft semi-automatic guns and mortars. Several tanks were hit. On ours, like on an anvil in a forge, shells of all calibers thundered, but I just can’t detect a single gun through the viewing slot. Finally I noticed the flash of a shot not far from our downed Po-2 plane; I see a cannon under the camouflage net and fire a fragmentation shell. The distance is very short, and in place of the cannon there is a fountain of earth.”

The command tried to organize counterattacks by mechanized corps and tank divisions in different directions, but other than minor tactical successes, these measures led to nothing. The foreman, commander of the T-26 tank Semyon Vasilyevich Matveev, recalls: “... Before the war, mechanized corps began to be formed according to the type of German armored corps. But I don’t know if we had at least one fully staffed mechanized corps. Ours wasn't even half full. Yes, the pieces are separate. In fact, our tank battalion did not recruit a company. But there were no cars or tractors at all. An army is not one soldier or even a battalion, it is a huge organism. The Germans had this organism and it worked (not bad, I note, it worked), but with us it was just beginning to emerge. So there is nothing to be ashamed of, that they were stronger than us then. Great stronger. That’s why they beat us often at first.” Having lost almost all the tanks located in the western districts, and with them the regular tank crews, the Red Army rolled back into the interior of the country. The lack of combat vehicles and the lightning-fast breakthroughs of German armored vehicles forced highly qualified personnel to be thrown into battle as ordinary infantry. However, the chaos of the first months of the retreat did not last long. Already at the end of July 1941, the command began to withdraw “horseless” tankers who had lost their tanks from the mechanized corps divisions to the rear. In August-September, the personnel of the mechanized corps, who had gained combat experience, were turned to the formation of tank brigades. The famous tank brigade of M.E. Katukov was staffed by tankers from the 15th Tank Division of the 16th Mechanized Corps, which was withdrawn at the last moment from the threat of encirclement near Uman. On November 7, 1941, tankmen of the 32nd Tank Division, which fought near Lvov in June, were driving along Red Square. And on October 9, 1941, in order to increase the combat effectiveness of tank forces, Stalin gave the order to assign command staff to heavy and medium tanks. According to this order, lieutenants and junior lieutenants were appointed to the positions of commanders of medium tanks. Platoons of medium tanks were to be commanded by senior lieutenants, and companies by captains. In order to improve the qualifications of tank crews, on November 18, 1941, it was ordered to staff them exclusively with middle and junior command personnel. Two months later, an order was issued by the People's Commissar of Defense, prohibiting the disbandment of tank units that had been put together and had combat experience that had lost vehicles in battle. Such units were ordered to be withdrawn to the rear in full strength for replenishment. If the tank unit was still subject to disbandment, then the senior command staff was sent to the head of the Personnel Directorate of the Armored Forces of the Red Army, and the crews were sent to reserve tank regiments. However, tankers often continued to be used for purposes other than their intended purpose. At the end of December 1942, Stalin shouted. It was ordered that all tankers used as riflemen, machine gunners, and artillerymen in the infantry, other branches of the military and rear establishments be immediately placed at the disposal of the armored department of the Red Army. From now on, tankers recovering after being treated in hospitals should also be sent only to tank forces. The order ended with a phrase that excluded double interpretation: “From now on, I categorically prohibit the use of tank crew personnel of all the above categories and specialties for purposes other than their intended purpose.” Apparently, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief did not have to return to this topic again. The Red Army was slowly recovering from two lost summer campaigns. And although there were still not enough tanks in the troops, the evacuated Kharkov and Leningrad tank factories were just setting up behind the Urals, and the army was training new cadres of tankers to replace those killed in battle.

At the beginning of the war, the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army was subordinate to thirteen tank, one tank technical, one vehicle technical, three motorbike, two tractor, and two aerial sleigh schools. Some of them, as the enemy approached, evacuated and stopped training for a while, graduating senior cadets as junior lieutenants. However, having deployed to a new location, they immediately began training new personnel for the armored forces. To train crew members, numerous reserve training regiments and battalions were deployed, and training companies were created at tank factories. In the summer of 1942, the shortage of tank crews became obvious - after a year of war there were very few personnel left, and young, untrained crews died in the first battles. In October, Stalin gave the order to staff tank schools with privates and sergeants who had proven themselves well in battle, with the formation of at least seven classes of secondary school. It was ordered to send five thousand people to schools every month. Eight thousand people were sent monthly to training tank units for crew training. The selection criteria were as follows: education - at least three years of primary school, age - no older than thirty-five years. At least forty percent of those sent had to have the ranks of junior sergeants and sergeants. Subsequently, such orders were issued annually throughout the war. Alexander Sergeevich Burtsev recalls: “Some guys will come from the front, study for six months and return to the front, but we all sit. True, if a person was at the front, participated in battles, it was easier for him to master the program. Moreover, they sent either a gunner, a mechanic, or a loader to the tank school. And we have been since school. What we could do is nothing.” In addition, tank schools were created on the basis of automobile and motorcycle schools. It was the reorganization of the schools that played a role in the fate of the tank commanders, junior lieutenant Yuri Maksovich Polyanovsky and lieutenant Alexander Mikhailovich Fadin: “We were read the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to rename the school the 2nd Gorky Tank School. Those who failed the medical examination were released as motorists. We, the youth, shout: “Hurray!”, and those who are older, who fought at Khalkhin Gol and in Finland, liberated Western Ukraine and Belarus, say: “Why are you happy? You will burn in these iron boxes.”

Yesterday's boys had to see from their own experience that service in tank forces is hard and bloody work, completely different from their previous ideas. Mostly veterans of 1921 - 1924 have survived to this day. birth. They became tank crews and were trained in a variety of conditions during the war. Each of them received their own experience and formed their own impressions of military life.

Conscripts entered the tank forces in different ways. “Why did I become a tank driver?... I, as a man, saw myself as a warrior in the future. In addition, my uncle was a military man, and in 1939 he told me: “Sasha, you are finishing your tenth year. I advise you to go to school. War cannot be avoided, so it’s better to be a commander in war - you can do more because you’ll be better trained,” recalls tank commander Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar. Some sought to get into other branches of the military, but served where they had to, for example, A.S. Burtsev was sent to an aviation school, but recruitment there had already been completed, and the conscripts were transported to the 1st Saratov Tank School. “I loved military affairs and wanted to enter the naval school. It was my dream. They have such a uniform!” recalls the battalion commander, Captain Vasily Pavlovich Bryukhov, who, before entering the tank school, managed to undergo training in a ski battalion and “fight off” being sent to an aviation technical school. Some future tank crews had already studied at military educational institutions of completely different branches of the military, like Semyon Lvovich Aria, but the war disrupted their plans: “I studied at the Novosibirsk Institute of Military Transport Engineers. After being wounded and concussed during the bombing of a train, I ended up in a battalion that trained driver mechanics.” The bulk of conscripts went where they were sent.

The pre-war training program for tank crews was quite different from the one offered to wartime cadets. A career tank commander trained for two years. He studied all types of tanks that were in service with the Red Army. He was taught to drive a tank, shoot from its fire weapons and, of course, given knowledge on tank battle tactics. In fact, what emerged from the tank school was a general specialist - the commander of a combat vehicle, capable of performing the duties of any member of the crew of his tank and providing its maintenance. According to the recollections of career tanker A.V. Bodnar, “there was enough practice to own a BT tank. We studied the material part in great detail. The M-17 engine is very complex, but we knew it down to the last screw. A cannon, a machine gun - they all dismantled and reassembled it.” The knowledge and skills acquired at the school allowed him to easily master first the KB, and then the T-34.

Tankers drafted into the army during the war did not have much time to prepare. The troops required constant replenishment. Therefore, the course of study was reduced to six months, and the program was cut to the minimum: “I graduated from school, fired three shells and a machine-gun disc... There was some kind of driving, the basics - getting under way, driving in a straight line,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. At the 1st Saratov Tank School, which A. S. Burtsev and N. Ya. Zheleznov graduated from, things were better - the cadets trained first on the English Matilda and Canadian Valentine tanks, and then on the T-34. They both claim that there was enough practice. Tank commander Lieutenant Nikolai Evdokimovich Glukhov, who, like junior lieutenant Arsenty Konstantinovich Rodkin and A.V. Bodnar, studied at the Ulyanovsk Tank School, notes that the cadets were immediately trained on modern technology and the training was of high quality: “Everything was useful to us in battle. And knowledge of weapons, and knowledge of technology: engine, cannon, machine gun.” Living conditions in schools also varied. In accordance with the order of the NPO of the USSR No. 312 dated September 22, 1941, the 9th food standard was introduced for cadets of all military schools of the Ground and Air Forces of the Red Army, which was close in calorie content to the front-line one. However, if the tank commander, Lieutenant Georgy Nikolaevich Krivov, who studied at the 1st Kharkov Tank School evacuated to Cherchik, says that “they fed well. Porridge with meat, butter for breakfast,” then V.P. Bryukhov, who studied at the same time as him in the evacuated Stalingrad school, recalls that they were fed so poorly that “even prisoners are not fed that way.” Apparently, it was not always possible to carry out the mentioned order.

Upon completion of training, graduates passed exams by the admissions committee. Based on the results of these exams, until 1943, the ranks of “lieutenant” were awarded to those who passed the exams “good” and “excellent”, or “junior lieutenant” - to those who passed the exams “satisfactorily”. Since the summer of 1943, all graduates began to be awarded the rank of “junior lieutenant.” In addition, the commission carried out certification, based on the results of which the graduate could be appointed as a platoon commander or commander of a line tank.

The newly appointed commanders of the marching units were sent to tank factories, where crew members trained in the training battalions of the training regiments were already waiting for them.

Their training lasted from three months for driver mechanics to one month for radio operators and loaders. Driver-mechanic Sergeant S.L. Ariya recalls: “We were taught driving, communication with the commander, the design and maintenance of the engine. They forced me to overcome obstacles and change the track (it was a very difficult operation - repairing a caterpillar track). During these two or three months that the training lasted, we also participated in the assembly of tanks on the main assembly line of the plant.” Pyotr Ilyich Kirichenko, who ended up in a battalion training gunner-radio operators, says: “After aviation radios and high-speed machine guns, which I studied at the school of gunner-bombers, studying a tank radio and a DT machine gun was a trifle.” Indeed, after a month of training with the rank of “senior sergeant”, he was already going to the front as part of the crew. It must be said that the participation of crew members in the assembly of tanks was very common. Almost all of the veterans interviewed helped workers assemble tanks while they were at the plant. This is primarily due to the shortage of workers at the factories themselves, as well as the opportunity for young commanders to receive a coupon for a free lunch.

If the “green” lieutenants were content with the crew that their superiors provided them, then the older commanders with front-line experience tried to select experienced tankers like them for their crew. G. N. Krivov recalls:

“Some officers, who were a little older, selected their crews, but we didn’t do that.” Looking ahead, it should be noted that the situation at the front was approximately the same. “The tank commander, the platoon commander cannot select his crew. The company commander can already, but the battalion commander always selects from those with whom he fought before,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. A typical example of this is the tank crew of the battalion commander, in which all its members were awarded government awards and which had to be commanded by A. M. Fadin: “The crew lived separately and did not mix with the other thirty crews.”

Some time before departure was spent “grinding” the crew members together and “putting together” combat units. The tanks assembled at the factory underwent a fifty-kilometer march, and firing training and tactical exercises were conducted at the training ground. For the crew of A. M. Fadin, the putting together ended as follows: “We received brand new tanks at the factory. We marched on them to our training ground. They quickly deployed into battle formation and carried out an attack on the move with live fire. In the gathering area they got themselves in order and, stretching out in a marching column, began to move to the railway station to load for the journey to the front. And before departure, the crew of V.P. Bryukhov fired only three shots from a cannon and fired one machine-gun disk. But it also happened: “They told us: “Here is your tank.” It will be assembled before your eyes.” Nothing like this. They didn’t have time to assemble our tank, but the train was already ready. We filled out forms, received a watch, a penknife, a silk handkerchief for filtering fuel, and went to the front,” says G. N. Krivov.

It often happened that upon arrival in the active army, the assembled crews disintegrated even before they got into the first battle. In the units where reinforcements arrived, a core of experienced tankers remained. They replaced “green” commanders and driver mechanics on arriving tanks, who could be sent to the battalion reserve or back to the factory for a tank, as happened with Yu. M. Polyanovsky. A. M. Fadin, certified as a tank platoon commander, did not lose his crew, but upon arrival at the front he became the commander of a line tank.

All tankers interviewed confirm the fact that the “combat vehicle crew” at the front was not a stable structure. On the one hand, high losses among personnel and equipment, especially in the offensive, led to a rapid change of crew members, on the other hand, the higher authorities did not care much about preserving the crew as a combat unit. Even the very successful V.P. Bryukhov had at least ten crews during the two years of the war. This is probably why there was no special friendship between the tankers. Although there were, of course, camaraderie. “In a tank, everyone has the same task - to survive and destroy the enemy. Therefore, crew cohesion is very important. It is necessary for the gunner to shoot accurately and quickly, the loader to load quickly, and the driver to maneuver on the battlefield. Such coherence of the crew always leads to positive results,” says A. S. Burtsev. There were exceptions, for example, the crew of the company commander, Senior Lieutenant Arkady Vasilyevich Maryevsky, who went through the entire war with his commander.

Returning to the question of the execution of the NCO order to staff tanks with junior and middle command personnel, it is difficult to say whether there was any system in assigning military ranks to crew members. The tank commander, as a rule, had the rank of lieutenant or junior lieutenant.

In the crew of A. M. Fadin, the driver had the rank of senior sergeant, and the gunner and radio operator had the rank of junior sergeant. Gunner-radio operator, senior sergeant P.I. Kirichenko, upon graduation from the training regiment, was awarded the rank of senior sergeant. In principle, any crew member had a chance to “rise” to officer rank and become a tank commander or even occupy a higher position. This happened, for example, with P.I. Kirichenko, who by the end of the war, having studied at the school, became a senior technician, commander of a repair “flight”. It was a fairly common practice that the most experienced tank crews, especially driver mechanics, were retrained for the position of tank commanders and given the rank of lieutenant or junior lieutenant. However, especially at the beginning of the war, it happened that the tank was commanded by sergeants or foremen, such as A. V. Maryevsky. A clear system of corresponding rank to a regular position in the Red Army existed only on paper, unlike the US Army or the Wehrmacht.

Arriving at the front, all tankers, regardless of rank, got involved in the work of maintaining the tank. “We serviced the tank ourselves - refueled it, loaded ammunition, repaired it. When I became a battalion commander, I still worked together with members of my crew,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. A.K. Rodkin echoes him: “We were not considered: a commander is not a commander, an officer is not an officer. In battle - yes, I am the commander, and to pull a caterpillar or clean a cannon - I am a crew member like everyone else. And I thought it was simply indecent to stand and smoke while others were working. And other commanders too." The monotonous work of refueling, oil and loading ammunition equalized all crew members for some time. Digging in a tank was an equally monotonous task that fell evenly on the shoulders of tank crews. A. M. Fadin recalls: “In one night, we, replacing each other in pairs, dug a trench with two shovels, throwing out up to 30 cubic meters of soil!”

Joint work and a sense of interdependence on the battlefield excluded any kind of hazing in the modern sense of the word. P.I. Kirichenko recalls: “The driver-mechanic, who was older than us, even older than the commander of the car, was like a “guy” for us and enjoyed indisputable authority, since he had already served in the army and knew all its wisdom and tricks. He looked after us. He didn’t drive us around like a newbie, forcing us to work; on the contrary, he tried to help us in everything.” In general, the role of older and more experienced comrades at the front was very great. Who, if not they, will tell you that you need to remove the springs from the hatch latches so that you can jump out of the burning tank, even if you are wounded, who, if not them, will advise you to clean the TPU chip so that it can easily jump out of its socket when you need to quickly leave the tank, who else, if not them, will help cope with the excitement before the attack.

It’s interesting, but apparently, due to their youth at that time, the veterans interviewed say that they did not experience the fear of death. “You don’t think about it there. It’s dark in the soul, of course, but not fear, but rather excitement. As soon as you get into the tank, you forget everything,” recalls A. M. Fadin. He is supported by A.S. Burtsev: “I did not experience any oppressive fear at the front. I was afraid, but there was no fear,” and G. N. Krivov adds: “I didn’t want death and didn’t think about it, but I saw many in the train going to the front who were worried and suffering - they were the first to die.” . In the battle, according to almost all veterans, there was a kind of blackout, which each of the surviving tankers describes differently. “You are no longer a human being and you can no longer reason or think like a human being. Maybe this was what saved me…” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov. P.V. Bryukhov says: “When you get hit, you jump out of the burning tank, it’s a little scary here. But in a tank there is no time to be afraid - you are busy with business.” The description given by G.N. Krivov of how tankers suppressed their fear of battle is very interesting: “In the last battles, I commanded a company tank. His guys were there. One is silent, won’t say a word, the other wants to eat. We found an apiary, and there he was, sprinkling bread and honey. I just have nervous excitement - I can’t sit still. The company commander is snoring and sniffling.” Of course, there were other fears besides the fear of death. They were afraid of being maimed and wounded. They were afraid of going missing and being captured.

Not everyone was able to cope with fear. Some veterans describe cases of the crew leaving a tank without permission even before it was hit. “This began to happen towards the end of the war. Let's say there's a battle going on. The crew jumps out, but the tank goes downhill, it goes down, and they knock it out. This can be seen from observation points. Measures were taken, of course, against these crews,” recalls Anatoly Pavlovich Schwebig, former deputy brigade commander for technical matters in the 12th Guards Tank Corps. Evgeniy Ivanovich Bessonov, who encountered this phenomenon in the Oryol offensive operation, speaks about the same thing: “The tanks were knocked out, and knocked out through the fault of the crews who left the tanks in advance, and the tanks continued to move towards the enemy without them.” However, it cannot be said that this was widespread, since other veterans did not encounter similar cases. Very rarely, but there have been cases of special disabling of a tank. One such example can be found in the memoirs of V.P. Bryukhov. The driver could have exposed the side opposite him to the fire of German guns. However, if such “craftsmen” were identified by SMERSH, then severe punishment immediately followed: “Between Vitebsk and Polotsk, three driver mechanics were shot. They framed the side of the car, but you can’t fool SMERSH,” recalls V. A. Maryevsky.

It is interesting that many veterans were faced with facts of people having premonitions of their imminent death: “My comrade Shulgin’s tank was destroyed by a direct hit from a heavy shell, apparently fired from a naval gun. He was older than us and had a presentiment of his death. Usually he was cheerful, made jokes, but two days before that he lost his temper. Didn't talk to anyone. Passed out." Both P.I. Kirichenko and N.E. Glukhov encountered similar cases, and S.L. Aria recalls a colleague who, sensing impending danger, saved him from death several times. At the same time, it should be noted that among the respondents there were no superstitious people who believed in omens. This is how V.P. Bryukhov describes the situation at the front: “Some did not shave for several days before the battle. Some believed that it was necessary to change their underwear, while others, on the contrary, did not want to change clothes. He remained intact in this overalls, and he keeps it. How did these signs appear? Young recruits arrive, we went to two or three battles, but half of them are gone. They don't need signs. And who survived, he remembered something: “Yeah, I got dressed.” “I didn’t shave, as usual,” and he begins to cultivate this sign. Well, if it’s confirmed the second time, that’s it, that’s faith.”

When asked about faith in God, veterans answered differently. The youth of that time were characterized by atheism and faith in their own strength, knowledge, skills and abilities. “I believed that they wouldn’t kill me” - this is how the majority of veterans interviewed put it. Nevertheless, “some had crosses, but at that time it was not fashionable, and even those who had them tried to hide them. We were atheists. There were also believers, but I don’t remember how many people I had for someone to pray,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. Of the tankers interviewed, only A. M. Fadin confirmed that during the war he believed in God: “At the front it was impossible to openly pray. I didn’t pray, but I kept faith in my soul.” Probably, many soldiers who found themselves in difficult situations came to believe in God, as happened with A.V. Bodnar in the hopeless situation he described in his memoirs.

In battle, all fears and forebodings faded into the background, overshadowed by two main desires - to survive and win. It is towards their implementation in combat that the work of the entire crew is aimed, each member of which has his own duties and sector of responsibility.

“The gunner must keep the gun in the direction of the tank at all times, observe through the sights, and report what he sees. The loader must look forward and to the right and inform the crew, the gunner-radio operator looks forward and to the right. The mechanic watches the road to warn the gunner about depressions and not to touch the ground with the gun. The commander mainly concentrates his attention to the left and forward,” says A. S. Burtsev.

A lot depended on the skill of two people - the driver and the gun commander or subsequently the gunner. V.P. Bryukhov recalls: “The experience of a mechanic is very important. If the mechanic is experienced, he does not need any advice. He himself will create the conditions for you, he will come out onto the site so that you can hit the target, and he will hide behind cover. Some mechanics even said this: “I will never die, because I will place the tank so that the blank will not hit where I am sitting.” I believe them." G.N. Krivoe generally believes that he survived the first battles only thanks to the skill of an experienced driver.

A.V. Maryevsky, unlike other veterans, puts the gunner in second place in importance after the tank commander: “The gun commander is more important. He could remain either a tank commander or a platoon commander. The gun commander is one!” It should be noted here that the veteran, the only one of those interviewed, claims that even after becoming a company commander, and then a battalion, he always sat at the levers himself: “If a shell hit the turret, of course, both the gun commander and the loader died. That's why I sat in the driver's seat. Even when I fought as a mechanic-driver on the T-60, T-70, I understood the essence of the matter, how to stay alive.”

Unfortunately, on average, the fire training of the tank crews was weak. “Our tankers shot very poorly,” says Evgeniy Ivanovich Bessonov, commander of a tank landing platoon of the 49th mechanized brigade of the 6th Guards Mechanized Corps of the 4th Guards Tank Army. Snipers such as N. Ya. Zheleznov, A. M. Fadin, V. P. Bryukhov were the exception rather than the rule.

The loader's job in combat was simple, but very intense: he had to push the required projectile into the breech of the gun and throw the cartridge case through the hatch after it was removed. According to V.P. Bryukhov, the loader could be any physically strong machine gunner - it was not difficult to explain to the young man the difference in the markings of an armor-piercing and high-explosive fragmentation projectile. However, the tension of the battle was sometimes such that the loaders fainted after inhaling powder gases. In addition, their palms were almost always burned, since the cartridges had to be thrown out immediately after the shot, so that they would not smoke in the fighting compartment.

In many ways, the gunner-radio operator felt like a “passenger” during the battle. “The view was limited, and the field of fire from this machine gun was even smaller,” recalls P. I. Kirichenko. “The shooter had a frontal machine gun, although nothing was visible through it; if he fired, it was only at the direction of the tank commander,” confirms N. Ya. Zheleznov. And Yu. M. Polyanovsky recalls the following incident: “We agreed among ourselves that, without having yet passed our infantry, we would begin to shoot from a cannon and a turret machine gun over the head of the infantry, but the frontal machine gun cannot be used, because it hits our own. And so we started shooting, and in the confusion the radio operator forgot that I had warned him. He gave a turn practically on his own.”

He was not needed as a signalman either. “We worked, as a rule, on one or two waves. The communication scheme was simple, any crew member could handle it,” recalls P.I. Kirichenko. V.P. Bryukhov adds: “On the T-34-76, the radio operator often switched from internal to external communications, but only when the commander was poorly prepared. And if he was a smart commander, he never gave up control - he switched when necessary.”

The gunner-radio operator provided real assistance to the driver during the march, helping to shift the four-speed gearbox of the early T-34s. “In addition, since his hands were busy, I took paper, poured samosad or shag into it, sealed it, lit it and inserted it into his mouth. This was also my responsibility,” recalls P.I. Kirichenko.

Without a separate hatch for emergency escape from the tank, radio operators “died most often. They are at the greatest disadvantage. The mechanic on the left won’t let him in, the loader or commander on top,” says V.P. Bryukhov. It is no coincidence that the T-34-85 linear tanks on which A.S. Burtsev fought had a crew of four people. “The tank commander does not have a radio operator in his crew. The fifth crew member appears at the platoon commander and higher up to the brigade commander.”

An important condition for the survival of the crew on the battlefield was its interchangeability. The tank commander received sufficient practice at the school to replace any crew member in the event of injury or death. The situation was more complicated with non-commissioned officers who received short-term training. According to S. L. Aria, there was no interchangeability due to the brevity of the training: “Well, I fired the gun a few times.” The need for interchangeability of crew members was realized by young lieutenants. N. Ya. Zheleznov recalls: “When putting together crews, I, as a platoon commander, had to make sure that tank crew members could replace each other.” P.I. Kirichenko recalls that his crew began to train for interchangeability spontaneously - everyone understood perfectly well what significance this would have in battle.

For many tankers, the battle ended in death or injury. A tank is a desirable target for infantry, artillery and aviation. His way is blocked by mines and barriers. Even a short stop for a tank can be fatal. The best and luckiest tank aces were not immune from an unexpected shell, mine or shot from a Faustpatron. Although most often it was newcomers who died... “There was an anti-aircraft battery on the outskirts of Kamenets-Podolsky. She burned two of our tanks, the crews of which were completely burned. Four burnt corpses lay near one tank. What remains of an adult is a little man the size of a child. The head is small, and the face is such a reddish-bluish-brown color,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov.

The main factors in the crew's defeat were armor fragments that occurred after it was penetrated by an armor-piercing projectile, and a fire that broke out if the fuel system was damaged. The impact of an armor-piercing or fragmentation projectile on the armor, even without penetrating it, could cause concussion and broken arms. The scale flying off the armor creaked on the teeth, got into the eyes, and large pieces could injure a person. Natalya Nikitichna Peshkova, Komsomol organizer of the motorized rifle battalion of the 3rd Guards Tank Army, recalls: “I have a special relationship with the tankers... they died terribly. If a tank was hit, and they were hit often, then it was a certain death: one or two, maybe, still managed to get out... the worst thing was burns, because at that time a burn of forty percent of the skin surface was lethal.” When a tank is hit and on fire, all hope is in yourself, in your reaction, strength, dexterity. “The guys were mostly fighting. Passive ones, as a rule, died quickly. To survive, you need to be energetic,” recalls A. M. Fadin. “How is it that when you jump out, you don’t understand anything, you fall out of the tower onto the wing, from the wing onto the ground (and that’s still one and a half meters), I’ve never seen anyone break an arm or leg so that there are abrasions?!” - V.P. Bryukhov still cannot understand.

The surviving tankers did not go “horseless” for long. Two or three days in a reserve regiment, you get a new tank and an unfamiliar crew - and again you go into battle. It was harder for company and battalion commanders. They fought until the last tank of their formation, which means they transferred from a damaged vehicle to a new one several times during one operation.

Coming out of the battle, the crew first of all had to service the vehicle: fill it with fuel and ammunition, check the mechanisms, clean it and, if necessary, dig a caponier for it and camouflage it. The entire crew took part in this work, otherwise the tankers simply would not have managed it. The commander sometimes avoided the most dirty and primitive work - cleaning the barrel or washing grease off shells. “I didn’t wash the shells. But he brought the boxes,” recalls A. S. Burtsev. But the caponiers for the tank or the “dugout” under it were always dug together.

During periods of rest or preparation for upcoming battles, the tank became a real home for the crew. The habitability and comfort of the "thirty-four" were at the minimum required level. “Caring for the crew was limited to only the most primitive,” states Aria. Indeed, the T-34 was a very tough machine to drive. At the moment of starting movement and braking, bruises were inevitable. Tankers were saved from injury only by tank helmets (this is how the veterans pronounced the name of this headgear). Without it there was nothing to do in the tank. He also saved his head from burns when the tank caught fire. The comfort of the “foreign cars” - American and British tanks - contrasting with the spartan furnishings of the T-34 aroused admiration among the tank crews. “I looked at the American M4A2 Sherman tanks: my God - a sanatorium! If you sit there, you won’t hit your head, everything is covered in leather! And during the war there is also a first aid kit, in the first aid kit there are condoms, sulfidine - everything is there! - A.V. Bodnar shares his impressions. - But they are not suitable for war. Because these two diesel engines, these earthen fuel purifiers, these narrow tracks - all of this was not for Russia,” he concludes. “They burned like torches,” says S. L. Aria. The only foreign tank that some, but not all, tankers speak of with respect is the Valentine. “A very successful car, low with a powerful gun. Of the three tanks that near Kamenets-Podolsk (spring 1944) they helped us out, one even reached Prague!” - recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov.

Having stood on the defensive or retreated to reorganize and replenish, the tankers tried to put in order not only their vehicles, but also themselves. During the offensive, the most characteristic form of warfare by tank forces of the Red Army in the period 1943 - 1945, they were not able to wash or change clothes, even food was delivered “only at the end of the day. There’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner - all together,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. G.N. Krivov recalls that during the nine days of the offensive he never saw the battalion kitchen.

The hardest thing, of course, was winter, almost everyone agrees with this, except A.V. Maryevsky, who believes that late autumn and early spring with their changeable weather, muddy roads, rain and snow are harder. Sometimes, when talking with veterans, you even get the impression that they didn’t fight at all in the summer. It is obvious that when trying to characterize the severity of front-line life, memory helpfully throws up episodes associated specifically with the winter period. A significant role here is played by the amount of clothing that the tank crews had to wear (warm underwear, warm uniforms, padded trousers and a padded jacket, a sheepskin coat) to protect themselves from the cold in the tank, which became a “real freezer” in winter. And, of course, under all this ammunition there were constant companions of wars and cataclysms - lice. Although here the opinion of veterans is divided. Some, such as A. M. Fadin or A. S. Burtsev, who fought from the end of forty-four, claim that “there were no lice. Because the crew was always connected with diesel fuel, with fuel. They didn’t take root.” Others, and most of them, say differently. “The lice were wild, especially in winter. Whoever told you that they don’t take root is talking nonsense! This means he has never been in a tank. And he was not a tank driver. There are so many lice in the tank!” - recalls V.P. Bryukhov, who commanded the company in which A.S. Burtsev fought. Such contradictions, quite often found in memoirs, should be attributed to the period from which the respondent began to fight, as well as to the individual’s individuality. The fight against insects was carried out at the first stop. Clothes were fried in homemade firecrackers, which consisted of a tightly closed barrel placed on the fire, into which a little water was poured, and the clothes were hung on a crosspiece. Bath and laundry teams also came, washed clothes and carried out sanitation.

Despite the difficult conditions, almost all veterans note that people did not get sick at the front.

The appearance of the tanker was very unpresentable: his clothes, hands, face - everything was stained with grease, fumes from the exhaust and gunpowder smoke, and stained with stains from fuel and shell sludge. The constant digging of shelters for the tank also did not add to the beauty. “By the end of any operation, everyone was wearing whatever: German jackets, civilian jackets, trousers. They could only be recognized as a Soviet tankman by their tank helmet,” recalls Captain Nikolai Konstantinovich Shishkin, commander of the battery of self-propelled guns ISU-152. It was possible to more or less put oneself in order only during reformation or on vacation, but respites were very rare. “What did you do during your moments of rest during the war? When was this vacation? - A. M. Fa-din answers the question with a question. I had to put up with the dirt. “They gave them quilted jackets, felt boots, they gave them all. When you got it all dirty in the tank, everything quickly broke down, and there was no operational replacement. I had to feel like some kind of homeless person for a long time,” says P. I. Kirichenko. The life of tank crews was not much different from the life of ordinary infantrymen: “In winter you are covered in mud, oily, you always have a lot of boils, and you catch a cold. I dug a trench, drove over with a tank, covered the stove a little with a tarpaulin - that’s all.” A.V. Maryevsky claims that “during the entire war I never slept in the house!”

Such a prosaic thing as a piece of ordinary tarpaulin played a huge role in the life of the tank crew. Almost unanimously, the veterans declare: without a tarpaulin there was no life in the tank. They covered themselves with it when they went to bed, and covered the tank during rain so that it would not be flooded with water. At lunchtime, the tarpaulin served as a “table”, and in winter it served as the roof of an improvised dugout. When, while being sent to the front, the tarpaulin of Ari's crew was blown off and carried into the Caspian Sea, he even had to steal the sail. According to the story of Yu. M. Polyanovsky, tarpaulin was especially needed in winter: “We had tank stoves. An ordinary stove for firewood was screwed onto the back. The crew had to go somewhere in winter, but we weren’t allowed into the village. It's wildly cold inside the tank, and then more than two people can't sleep in there. They dug a good trench, drove a tank onto it, covered it all with a tarpaulin, and nailed down the edges of the tarpaulin. And they hung a stove under the tank and heated it. And thus we warmed the trench for ourselves and slept.”

The tankers' rest was not particularly varied - they could have washed and shaved. Someone wrote letters home. Someone, like G. N. Krivov, took advantage of the opportunity to be photographed. Occasionally, concert brigades came to the front, they had their own amateur performances, sometimes they brought movies, but many, according to A.K. Rodkin, began to pay attention to this after the war. The fatigue was too strong. An important aspect of maintaining crew morale was information about events at the front and in the country as a whole. The main source of news was the radio, which in the second half of the war was part of the equipment of almost every combat vehicle. In addition, they were supplied with the press, both central and divisional and army newspapers, and were constantly given political information. Like many other front-line soldiers, the tankers well remembered Ilya Ehrenburg’s articles calling for the fight against the Germans.

End of free trial.

BODNAR ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH

ARIA SEMYON LVOVICH

POLYANOVSKY YURI MAKSOVICH

FADIN ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVICH

KIRICHENKO PETER ILYICH

BURTSEV ALEXANDER SERGEEVICH

BRYUKHOV VASILY PAVLOVICH

Krivov Georgy Nikolaevich

RODKIN ARSENTY KONSTANTINOVICH

MARYEVSKY ARKADY VASILIEVICH

ZHELEZNOV NIKOLAY YAKOVLEVICH

Appendix SELECTED ORDERS RELATING TO ARMOR FORCES

ORDER ON THE EXPERIENCE OF USING MECHANIZED FORCES IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE WAR No. 0045 dated July 1, 1941

ORDER ON EARLY RELEASE OF SENIOR COURSE CADETS OF MILITARY SCHOOLS

ORDER ON THE FORMATION OF TANK DIVISIONS No. 0058 dated July 19, 1941

ORDER ON THE TEMPORARY TERMINATION OF THE ISSUE OF SKETCH PROPERTY TO PERSONNEL OF REAR UNITS, INSTITUTIONS AND ESTABLISHMENTS OF THE RED ARMY No. 0280 dated August 11, 1941

ORDER ON THE FORMATION OF SEPARATE TANK BRIGADES No. 0063 dated August 12, 1941

ORDER ON THE ISSUE OF VODKA 100 GRAMS PER DAY TO THE FRONT LINE OF THE ACTING ARMY, No. 0320, dated August 25, 1941.

ORDER ON THE ASSIGNMENT OF TRAINING, RECORDING, SELECTION AND PLACEMENT OF PERSONNEL OF THE COMMANDING STAFF OF THE RED ARMY TO THE MAIN DIRECTORATES AND DIRECTORATES OF NGOS OF THE RELEVANT BRANCHES OF THE ARMY No. 0356 dated September 20, 1941

ORDER ON THE APPOINTMENT OF COMMAND STAFF TO MEDIUM AND HEAVY TANKS No. 0400 dated October 9, 1941

ORDER ON THE PROCEDURE FOR STAFFING TANK CREWS No. 0433 dated November 18, 1941

ORDER ON THE PRESERVATION AND RELEASE FOR COMPLETION OF ARMOR UNITS THAT HAVE LOST COMBAT MATERIAL PART

ORDER OF THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE SUPREME HIGH COMMAND ON THE COMBAT USE OF TANK UNITS AND FORMATIONS No. 057 dated January 22, 1942

ORDER ON REWARDING PERSONNEL OF ARMORED TANK REPAIR UNITS FOR QUICK AND HIGH-QUALITY REPAIR OF TANKS

ORDER ON THE INTRODUCTION OF MONETARY REWARDS FOR EVACUATION OF TANKS IN FRONT-FRONT CONDITIONS AND ESTABLISHMENT OF BONUSES FOR REPAIR OF COMBAT AND AUXILIARY VEHICLES AT SELF-SUPPORTED ARMOR REPAIR BASES No. 0357 May 7, 1942

ORDER ON THE PROCEDURE FOR ISSUING VODKA TO THE ACTIVE ARMY TROOPS No. 0373 dated May 12, 1942

DECISION OF THE STATE DEFENSE COMMITTEE No. GOKO-1227s dated May 11, 1942 Moscow, Kremlin. ABOUT THE PROCEDURE FOR ISSUING VODKA TO THE ACTIVE ARMY TROOPS

ORDER ON THE COMPOSITION AND ORGANIZATION OF TANK UNITS IN TANK CORPS AND TANK ARMIES No. 00106 May 29, 1942

ORDER OF THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE SUPREME HIGH COMMAND ON THE WORK OF DEPUTY COMMANDERS OF THE FRONT AND ARMIES FOR ARMORED FORCES No. 0455 dated June 5, 1942

ORDER ON THE PROCEDURE FOR STORING AND ISSUING VODKA TO THE ACTING ARMY TROOPS No. 0470 dated June 12, 1942

ORDER ON SENDING TANKS PRODUCED BY THE STALINGRAD TRACTOR PLANT TO THE STALINGRAD AND NORTH CAUCASIAN FRONT No. 0580 dated July 30, 1942

ORDER ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TANK SHOOTING ON THE WAY INTO COMBAT PRACTICES OF TANK FORCES No. 0728 dated September 19, 1942

ORDER ON THE COMBAT USE OF TANK AND MECHANIZED UNITS AND FORMATIONS No. 325 of October 16, 1942

ORDER ON STAFFING TANK SCHOOLS OF THE RED ARMY No. 0832 dated October 17, 1942

CALCULATION OF THE MONTHLY ALLOCATION OF CANDIDATES TO TANK SCHOOLS BY FRONT

ORDER ON THE ISSUE OF VODKA TO MILITARY UNITS OF THE ACTING ARMY SINCE NOVEMBER 25, 1942 No. 0883 dated November 13, 1942

ORDER ON ISSUING NON-SMOKING FIGHTERS AND COMMANDERS WITH CHOCOLATE, SUGAR OR CANDY IN REPLACEMENT OF TOBACCO ALLOWANCE No. 354 dated November 13, 1942

ORDER ON ESTABLISHING DRIVING CLASSES FOR TANK DRIVERS No. 372 of November 18, 1942

ORDER ON REQUIRING TANK TRAINING UNITS WITH VARIABLE STRUCTURES No. 0909 dated November 26, 1942

ORDER ON THE USE OF TANK CARRIERS BY SPECIALTY No. 0953 dated December 13, 1942

ORDER ON REDUCING THE NUMBER AND REPLACING OLDER AGES AND WOMEN SERVANTS IN UNITS AND FORMATIONS OF ARMORED AND MECHANIZED FORCES OF THE RED ARMY No. 002 dated January 3, 1943

ORDER ON STRENGTHENING THE FIRE POWER OF TANK AND MECHANIZED UNITS AND FORMATIONS OF THE RED ARMY No. 020 dated January 10, 1943

ORDER ON EQUIPMENT OF TRAINING TANK UNITS

ORDER ON INTRODUCTION TO THE STAFF OF THE TANK AND MECHANIZED CORPS RESERVE TANKS, TANK CREWS AND DRIVERS No. 066 dated January 28, 1943

ORDER ON THE PROCEDURE FOR ISSUING VODKA TO THE ACTIVE ARMY TROOPS No. 0323 dated May 2, 1943

ORDER ON THE ORGANIZATION OF RETRAINING POLITICAL STAFF INTENDED FOR USE IN POSITIONS OF COMMAND STAFF IN ARMORED AND MECHANIZED FORCES OF THE RED ARMY No. 0381 dated June 18, 1943

ORDER ON INCENTIVENING FIGHTERS AND COMMANDERS FOR COMBAT WORK IN DESTROYING ENEMY TANKS No. 0387 dated June 24, 1943

ORDER OF THE FIRST DEPUTY PEOPLE'S COMMISSIONER OF DEFENSE ON THE PUNISHMENT OF THOSE GUILTY FOR DISRUPTION OF THE COMBAT ORDER ON THE CONCENTRATION OF TANK UNITS IN THE 40TH ARMY No. 006 January 20, 1944

ORDER OF THE DEPUTY PEOPLE'S COMMISSIONER OF DEFENSE OF THE USSR ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RANKS AND BENEFITS FOR CADETS GRADING OUT SELF-PROPELLED ARTILLERY SCHOOLS, No. 79 dated May 25, 1944.

ORDER OF THE DEPUTY PEOPLE'S COMMISSIONER OF DEFENSE ON THE squandering of the GIFT FUND IN THE MANAGEMENT OF THE COMMANDER OF ARMOR AND MECHANIZED FORCES OF THE 1ST UKRAINIAN FRONT AND PULLING PERSONS GUILTY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS

From the author

The sun armor is hot,

And the dust of the hike on my clothes.

Pull the overalls off the shoulder -

And into the shade, into the grass, but only

Check the engine and open the hatch:

Let the car cool down.

We will endure everything with you -

We are people, but she is steel...

"This must never happen again!" - the slogan proclaimed after the Victory became the basis for the entire domestic and foreign policy of the Soviet Union in the post-war period. Having emerged victorious from the most difficult war, the country suffered enormous human and material losses. The victory cost more than 27 million Soviet lives, which amounted to almost 15% of the population of the Soviet Union before the war. Millions of our compatriots died on the battlefields, in German concentration camps, died of hunger and cold in besieged Leningrad, and in evacuation. The “scorched earth” tactics carried out by both warring sides during the retreat left the territory, which before the war was home to 40 million people and which produced up to 50% of the gross national product, lay in ruins. Millions of people found themselves without a roof over their heads and lived in primitive conditions. The fear of a repetition of such a catastrophe dominated the nation. At the level of the country's leaders, this resulted in colossal military expenditures, which placed an unbearable burden on the economy. At our philistine level, this fear was expressed in the creation of a certain supply of “strategic” products - salt, matches, sugar, canned food. I remember very well how as a child my grandmother, who experienced wartime hunger, always tried to feed me something and was very upset if I refused. We, children born thirty years after the war, continued to be divided into “us” and “Germans” in our yard games, and the first German phrases we learned were “Hende Hoch”, “Nicht Schiessen”, “Hitler Kaput” " In almost every house one could find a reminder of the past war. I still have my father’s awards and a German box of gas mask filters, standing in the hallway of my apartment, which is convenient to sit on while tying your shoelaces.

The trauma caused by the war had another consequence. An attempt to quickly forget the horrors of war, to heal wounds, as well as a desire to hide the miscalculations of the country’s leadership and the army resulted in the propaganda of an impersonal image of “the Soviet soldier who bore on his shoulders the entire burden of the fight against German fascism” and praise of the “heroism of the Soviet people.” The policy pursued was aimed at writing an unambiguously interpreted version of events. As a consequence of this policy, the memoirs of combatants published during the Soviet period bore visible traces of external and internal censorship. And only towards the end of the 80s it became possible to talk openly about the war.

The main objective of this book is to introduce the reader to the individual experiences of veteran tankers who fought on the T-34. The book is based on literary interviews with tank crews collected between 2001 and 2004. The term “literary processing” should be understood exclusively as bringing recorded oral speech into conformity with the norms of the Russian language and building a logical chain of storytelling. I tried to preserve as much as possible the language of the story and the peculiarities of speech of each veteran.

I note that interviews as a source of information suffer from a number of shortcomings that must be taken into account when opening this book. Firstly, one should not look for exceptional accuracy in descriptions of events in memories. After all, more than sixty years have passed since they took place. Many of them merged together, some were simply erased from memory. Secondly, you need to take into account the subjectivity of the perception of each of the storytellers and not be afraid of contradictions between the stories of different people or the mosaic structure that develops on their basis. I think that the sincerity and honesty of the stories included in the book are more important for understanding the people who went through the hell of war than punctuality in the number of vehicles that participated in the operation or the exact date of the event.

An attempt to generalize the individual experience of each person, to try to separate the common features characteristic of the entire military generation from the individual perception of events by each of the veterans, is presented in the articles “T-34: Tank and Tankers” and “The Crew of a Combat Vehicle.” Without in any way pretending to complete the picture, they nevertheless allow us to trace the attitude of the tank crews to the equipment entrusted to them, the relationships in the crew, and life at the front. I hope that the book will serve as a good illustration of the fundamental scientific works of Doctor of History. n. E. S. Senyavskaya “Psychology of war in the 20th century: the historical experience of Russia” and “1941 - 1945. Front-line generation. Historical and psychological research."

Alexey Isaev

T-34: TANK AND TANK PEOPLE

German vehicles were crap against the T-34.

Captain A. V. Maryevsky

...

“I did it. I held out. Destroyed five buried tanks. They couldn’t do anything because these were T-III, T-IV tanks, and I was on the “thirty-four”, whose frontal armor their shells did not penetrate.”

Few tankers from the countries participating in World War II could repeat these words of the commander of the T-34 tank, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar, in relation to their combat vehicles. The Soviet T-34 tank became a legend primarily because those people who sat behind the levers and sights of its cannon and machine guns believed in it. In the memoirs of tank crews, one can trace the idea expressed by the famous Russian military theorist A. A. Svechin: “If the importance of material resources in war is very relative, then faith in them is of enormous importance.”

Page 1 of 80

From the author

The sun armor is hot,

And the dust of the hike on my clothes.

Pull the overalls off the shoulder -

And into the shade, into the grass, but only

Check the engine and open the hatch:

Let the car cool down.

We will endure everything with you -

We are people, but she is steel...

"This must never happen again!" - the slogan proclaimed after the Victory became the basis for the entire domestic and foreign policy of the Soviet Union in the post-war period. Having emerged victorious from the most difficult war, the country suffered enormous human and material losses. The victory cost more than 27 million Soviet lives, which amounted to almost 15% of the population of the Soviet Union before the war. Millions of our compatriots died on the battlefields, in German concentration camps, died of hunger and cold in besieged Leningrad, and in evacuation. The “scorched earth” tactics carried out by both warring sides during the retreat left the territory, which before the war was home to 40 million people and which produced up to 50% of the gross national product, lay in ruins. Millions of people found themselves without a roof over their heads and lived in primitive conditions. The fear of a repetition of such a catastrophe dominated the nation. At the level of the country's leaders, this resulted in colossal military expenditures, which placed an unbearable burden on the economy. At our philistine level, this fear was expressed in the creation of a certain supply of “strategic” products - salt, matches, sugar, canned food. I remember very well how as a child my grandmother, who experienced wartime hunger, always tried to feed me something and was very upset if I refused. We, children born thirty years after the war, continued to be divided into “us” and “Germans” in our yard games, and the first German phrases we learned were “Hende Hoch”, “Nicht Schiessen”, “Hitler Kaput” " In almost every house one could find a reminder of the past war. I still have my father’s awards and a German box of gas mask filters, standing in the hallway of my apartment, which is convenient to sit on while tying your shoelaces.

The trauma caused by the war had another consequence. An attempt to quickly forget the horrors of war, to heal wounds, as well as a desire to hide the miscalculations of the country’s leadership and the army resulted in the propaganda of an impersonal image of “the Soviet soldier who bore on his shoulders the entire burden of the fight against German fascism” and praise of the “heroism of the Soviet people.” The policy pursued was aimed at writing an unambiguously interpreted version of events. As a consequence of this policy, the memoirs of combatants published during the Soviet period bore visible traces of external and internal censorship. And only towards the end of the 80s it became possible to talk openly about the war.

The main objective of this book is to introduce the reader to the individual experiences of veteran tankers who fought on the T-34. The book is based on literary interviews with tank crews collected between 2001 and 2004. The term “literary processing” should be understood exclusively as bringing recorded oral speech into conformity with the norms of the Russian language and building a logical chain of storytelling. I tried to preserve as much as possible the language of the story and the peculiarities of speech of each veteran.

I note that interviews as a source of information suffer from a number of shortcomings that must be taken into account when opening this book. Firstly, one should not look for exceptional accuracy in descriptions of events in memories. After all, more than sixty years have passed since they took place. Many of them merged together, some were simply erased from memory. Secondly, you need to take into account the subjectivity of the perception of each of the storytellers and not be afraid of contradictions between the stories of different people or the mosaic structure that develops on their basis. I think that the sincerity and honesty of the stories included in the book are more important for understanding the people who went through the hell of war than punctuality in the number of vehicles that participated in the operation or the exact date of the event.

An attempt to generalize the individual experience of each person, to try to separate the common features characteristic of the entire military generation from the individual perception of events by each of the veterans, is presented in the articles “T-34: Tank and Tankers” and “The Crew of a Combat Vehicle.” Without in any way pretending to complete the picture, they nevertheless allow us to trace the attitude of the tank crews to the equipment entrusted to them, the relationships in the crew, and life at the front. I hope that the book will serve as a good illustration of the fundamental scientific works of Doctor of History. n. E. S. Senyavskaya “Psychology of war in the 20th century: the historical experience of Russia” and “1941 - 1945. Front-line generation. Historical and psychological research."

Alexey Isaev

T-34: TANK AND TANK PEOPLE

German vehicles were crap against the T-34.

Captain A. V. Maryevsky

“I did it. I held out. Destroyed five buried tanks. They couldn’t do anything because these were T-III, T-IV tanks, and I was on the “thirty-four”, whose frontal armor their shells did not penetrate.”

Few tankers from the countries participating in World War II could repeat these words of the commander of the T-34 tank, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar, in relation to their combat vehicles. The Soviet T-34 tank became a legend primarily because those people who sat behind the levers and sights of its cannon and machine guns believed in it. In the memoirs of tank crews, one can trace the idea expressed by the famous Russian military theorist A. A. Svechin: “If the importance of material resources in war is very relative, then faith in them is of enormous importance.”

Svechin served as an infantry officer in the Great War of 1914 - 1918, saw the debut of heavy artillery, airplanes and armored vehicles on the battlefield, and he knew what he was talking about. If soldiers and officers have faith in the technology entrusted to them, then they will act bolder and more decisively, paving their way to victory. On the contrary, distrust, readiness to mentally or actually throw a weak weapon will lead to defeat. Of course, we are not talking about blind faith based on propaganda or speculation. Confidence was instilled in people by the design features that strikingly distinguished the T-34 from a number of combat vehicles of that time: the inclined arrangement of armor plates and the V-2 diesel engine.

The principle of increasing the effectiveness of tank protection due to the inclined arrangement of armor plates was clear to anyone who studied geometry at school. “The T-34 had thinner armor than the Panthers and Tigers. Total thickness approximately 45 mm. But since it was located at an angle, the leg was approximately 90 mm, which made it difficult to penetrate,” recalls the tank commander, Lieutenant Alexander Sergeevich Burtsev. The use of geometric structures in the protection system instead of brute force by simply increasing the thickness of armor plates gave, in the eyes of the T-34 crews, an undeniable advantage to their tank over the enemy. “The placement of the Germans’ armor plates was worse, mostly vertical. This is, of course, a big minus. Our tanks had them at an angle,” recalls the battalion commander, Captain Vasily Pavlovich Bryukhov.